


Researching Love

by recoveringrabbit



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Colleagues to Lovers, F/M, FitzSimmons Secret Santa, Fluff, Mutual Pining, New York City, Traveling, bed sharing, gratuitous nerd-ing about eighteenth-century scientists, mutual obliviousness, sudden formalwear, wooly jumpers, writers au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-03 16:45:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 36,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17287760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recoveringrabbit/pseuds/recoveringrabbit
Summary: In the throes of research for her next bestselling biographical novel, Jemma Simmons gets a great idea: why doesn't her translator-cum-fact checker-cum-first reader just come with her to the archives, thereby saving everybody's time and energy? That they've never met in person any time in the last eight years is irrelevant. Fitz agrees without much argument. But then she has responsibilities to her publishing house...and his rotten one demands his undivided attention at the last minute...and the hotel is full except for one room...and neither of them truly considered the difference between knowing someone via Skype and knowing someone in real life.They meant to learn about Marie and Antonin Lavoisier. They may end up learning more than they expected.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dilkirani](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dilkirani/gifts).



> As you may be able to tell from the tags, I have never written a more tropey, Hallmark-Movie-esque story in my life. 
> 
> Happy Secret Santa, Rani!
> 
> NB: If you want to look up the Lavoisiers on Wikipedia before you begin, I will not say you nay—however, anything that you absolutely must know for the story, I will tell you as it progresses.

When asked what her favorite part of her work was, Jemma Simmons cycled through several answers: Sometimes she said “the research and learning process;” sometimes “finding the story in bare facts;” most often the—absolutely honest—response “when I meet people who have been inspired by the lives of the science heroines I write about.” It depended, really, on the situation and questioner. Anne, her publicist, congratulated her on smart strategizing, but Jemma didn’t think of it as a strategy at all. Truthfully, she had never been able to settle on her ultimate answer.

“And that’s why you keep doing it,” her editor Bobbi said, “because you love every part of your work.”

“Well, don’t you?” Jemma asked.

On the other side of the Skype connection, Bobbi snorted. “I like more of it than I don’t more days than I don’t.”

“That’s not _so_ bad.”

“No, it isn’t,” Bobbi agreed cheerfully, “I can’t say the same for Hunter, and I married him twice.”

“Still married?”

“Today.” Bobbi pulled a pen from her hair like she was unsheathing a sword and tapped the end against the notepad in front of her. “So if you’re signing off on the text as it stands, we’ll send this to the typesetters and get you the proofs asap. You’re 100 percent sure there’s nothing more to change?”

Jemma glanced down at the draft of _Aminus Invictus: Sophia Brahe Thott Lange_. Knowing this was her last chance to change anything dramatic, she had spent the last six weeks working meticulously through the copyedits to ensure everything was just right and could say with 98 percent confidence that the book read exactly as she meant it to—2 percent being the reasonable margin of error for typos. And yet, she hesitated.

At her silence, Bobbi looked up from whatever note she was writing.

“Is this the sorrowful moment of detachment, or are you really not sure?”

“I’ve already said goodbye to Sophie,” Jemma protested, “she’s well launched, and the Lavoisiers and I are getting nicely acquainted.”

“Then it’s the latter.” Bobbi sighed. “I don’t need to tell you that we need to get a move on if we’re going to bring it in on time. And we have to bring it in on time, Jemma. We’ve already got publicity in motion for you.”

“I know.”

Looking straight into the camera, Bobbi took on the firm tone Jemma privately called ‘older sister voice.’ “So here’s what we’re going to do: I’m going to hang up. You’re going to call Fitz and ask him, one more time, if he’s sure he won’t let you change the acknowledgements. And when he says no, which he always does, you send me an email and give me the okay. Does that sound do-able?”

“He might say yes this time,” she said, but Bobbi’s even gaze eloquently expressed their mutual disbelief of her assertion. Jemma wrapped both hands backwards around her neck. “Yes, all right. I’ll send you a message once I’ve spoken with him.”

“Good. And you have the New York dates on the calendar?”

“I do.”

“I’ll wait to hear from you, then. But not very long!”

After saying goodbye, Jemma closed her computer with just a bit more force than recommended by the manufacturer and flounced away from her seat at the kitchen table, going instead to the counter and the electric kettle thereon. Tea would provide a convenient distraction from the issue at hand, namely that Bobbi had ably diagnosed both problem and solution and Jemma didn’t want her to be right. She’d almost rather rewrite the whole thing than ask Fitz to change his mind. Her translator-cum-fact checker-cum-first reader was, among other things, infuriatingly intractable on the matter of credit for his work; all her best arguments hadn’t made more than a dent in the eight years of their collaboration. It didn’t change the fact that he was wrong. As she waited for her tea to brew, Jemma marshaled her forced for one more assault. “After all,” she said aloud, “it’s hardly half a line. I’m not being unreasonable. And it’s truly in his best interests anyway.” By the time her tea was ready, she had almost convinced herself this would be the time she succeeded.

He picked up the phone on the first ring, sounding breathless. “My battery’s going faster than a 99 Flake, so if Bobbi had substantial notes you’re going to have to talk fast.”

“No,” she said, used to the way he assumed they were continually in the middle of a conversation, “no, she was happy to sign off, but...”

While she searched for what had seemed like the perfect argument, he groaned. “This is about the acknowledgements again, isn’t it. Simmons, I swear, we’ve been over this a hundred times.”

“A thousand,” she agreed, “but it’s still ridiculous! Not only do you _deserve_ to be mentioned by name, it’s the only way I can repay you for all the work you do in the book since I’m also forbidden to remunerate you financially—”

“We’ve talked about that a hundred times too—”

“—your publishing house is tyrannical about conflict of interest—”

“—I know you think I’m being too careful but honestly they’re despots and have eyes everywhere, they’d find out somehow—”

“—as though my books are somehow competition for theirs, when travel guides and biographical novels couldn’t be further apart—”

“They do print some travel guides/biographies,” he said, and she huffed.

“And if they made use of you there I would be happy for them to do so. Instead, they squander your talents fact-checking European travel guides—no one’s saying that’s not a worthwhile project, Fitz, only that you could do more.”

“Well,” he said, “I got my degree in modern languages and I didn’t want to teach, so I’m feeling pretty good about having a job that uses my education at all. Like I’ve said before. The last five times we’ve had this conversation, at least.”

And so they ended where everyone knew they would: Jemma’s book would go to press with Fitz’s substantial contributions attributed only to her ‘learned collaborator’. She pursed her lips to hold back further argument. Fitz knew his employers better than she did; if he felt a half-line thanking him by name would result in a breach-of-contract suit, she would spare him the worry if she could. She remained unconvinced. But she respected his integrity too much to press the issue any further. “All right,” she finally managed, “then I’ll tell Bobbi to proceed.”

“Good.” He let a half-beat of silence close that conversation, then opened a new one. “Your call was at three, wasn’t it? Was Bobbi—oh, damn.”

The phone went suddenly silent and Jemma took it from her ear in surprise. A second later, the screen lit up with a FaceTime request. “Why didn’t you tell me to call you on FaceTime to begin?” she asked once Fitz’s face—jostling slightly as he adjusted the computer screen on his end—appeared.

“I thought you were probably going to ask about the acknowledgements again and wanted an out.” The corner of his mouth ticked up, which meant he was joking. Mostly. “Was Bobbi bothering you about the Lavoisiers? Or have you just been mucking about trying to come up with better arguments.”

“Neither, actually,” she said haughtily, though of course she _had_ been mucking about, and Fitz’s eyebrows told her he knew it. “Bobbi doesn’t bother me about the Lavoisiers; it isn’t her job to sell the next book, only edit it.”

He scratched at his beard. “Admittedly, she did pick it up without talking to anyone about it. You’ve made a name for yourself writing about women who are overshadowed by more famous men. You can’t blame people for being concerned that you’re suddenly writing a book about a husband-wife team.”

“I have a good reason for it.”

“What is it?”

“It’s...” She made a waving motion in the air. “Oh, it’ll come to me with the research. It always does.” Fitz nodded; he was familiar with her writing process. “Bobbi did ask generally how it was coming, but she’s not particularly interested in the details.”

“Can’t imagine _why_.”

“Stop saying nonsense. Research is your favorite part.”

“Naturally; it’s the only part I’ve got anything to do with. All the other bits you do with other people. If you wrote books one at a time we probably wouldn’t talk to each other for a year between books, at least.”

She tried to imagine it—spending a year concentrating solely on shepherding a book from draft to publication, speaking only to Bobbi and others at the publishing house—and a shiver ran up her spine. It was a far from pleasant prospect. Once the research and writing had finished, the rest was bloodless business with none of the full-bodied passion that made the first part so enjoyable. “Oh, I don’t know if that’s true,” she said, “you know copy editors usually want to change your translations, so I’d have to call and verify we were correct.”

“Which I always am.”

“More or less,” she agreed, taking a sip of tea to hide her amusement as he bristled up like an indignant bird.

“I’m sorry, have I ever been incorrect in a translation once in the four books we’ve done together? Haven’t people commented on their clarity and lucidity? I do my work brilliantly, thank you very much. I couldn’t do it better if I _was_ paid for it.”

“Ugh,  _Fitz—_ ”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He held both hands up in the air and did, indeed, look apologetic. “I’ll never bring it up again.”

“And anyway,” she said, the subject change serving as their common method of accepting an apology, “it would be impractical to work on one book at a time. I’d need, oh, five or six years to write them, rather than the three it takes me now. Advances are already stretched thin as it is.”

“Ah, yes, regarding that.” Fitz sat back in his chair, picking something up from his desk to turn over and under between his long fingers. She didn’t realize she was staring until she caught a glimpse of herself in the corner of the screen. “Did you get the advance cleared for the trip to Cornell? Because if you’re going to be sending me pages of archaic French in centuries-old ink I’d like to have them on hand before my work goes mad. Nothing like it to clear the air after shouting ‘Rue _what_?’ across international connections for eight hours.”

“Oh!” The prospect of another battle royal over acknowledgements had driven it clear out of her mind, but his question brought her good news with all its attendant excitement back in a rush. She bounced a little in her seat. “Fitz, brilliant news. Well, it’s mostly brilliant. I suppose part of it is actually a bit problematic, but it’s very exciting and solves the problem of paying to get to New York, so that makes it—”

“Simmons!”

“Right. Yes.” She took a deep breath. “Apparently the publishers are so excited about _Sophia_ they want to make it a centerpiece of the fall list.”

His eyes lit up. “Well done, you!”

“Thank you. But Fitz, here’s the best part—”

“More money? How could that be problematic?”

“No, not more money—well, eventually, but not now. No, what they’d like is for me to go up to New York City and do some publicity before it comes out: a reading at the Strand, and some talk shows, maybe.” As she spoke she watched his eyes grow wider and wider, his laconic posture tightening until he was almost sitting on the edge of his seat. “Fitz, can you believe it? Our Sophie on _The View_?”

“No! I mean, of course, it only makes sense, every one of your books has been on the bestseller list for months—”

“Well, and if they’ve done so well without much publicity they might rather spend the money somewhere else. But not this time!”

One of his rare, real smiles stretched across his face, warming her from the inside out. “That’s amazing. Really, Jemma, congratulations.”

She ducked her head to look into her tea mug, suddenly shy in the face of his delight. Telling Fitz had been the first thing she thought of when Bobbi revealed the plans, knowing he deserved to share in the joy of this accomplishment, but she hadn’t counted on how much of his pleasure would be for her success. She should have known, though. Of all Fitz’s myriad character traits, ‘generous’ ranked right after ‘no patience for idiocy’. “Thank you, Fitz. It wouldn’t be happening without you.”

“I know,” he said easily, still grinning, and then his smile dropped suddenly away. “Hey, but the book isn’t coming out until autumn.”

“October,” she agreed, “and there’s the problem.”

“So you won’t be able to get to Cornell to look at the Lavoisier collection for another six months?” He sucked in a slow, considering breath. “That’s going to set your research back substantially.”

It was, and she hadn’t yet had time to sort how she would be able to keep on schedule. The New York events would just be the beginning of her promotional tour; once _Sophia_ came out in full force she would likely be sent out for a few weeks and have other events sporadically for a few months, making any substantial research difficult at best. She had counted on having a quiet summer to do some serious reading once Fitz’s actual responsibilities to his proper job died down after the spring rush and he was able to crack on with her translations. “And if I’ve got other responsibilities in New York, I won’t be able to take as much time as I would like in the archive, either. I’m not sure what to do about it yet.”

He drummed his fingers against his lips. “Yeah, I don’t know. That’s a poser. But you’ve got time to think about it, yeah? We’ll figure it out. Don’t let it take away from being excited. You’re finally getting the publicity you deserve! That’s something to be glad about, not anxious.”

“You’re right, of course.”

“As usual.” Another grin flashed across his face before he sat up sharply, pushing up his sleeve to look at his watch. “Hey, Jemma, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to check over my pages before a deadline at five. Congratulations, again. I’ll chat to you when I chat to you?”

“Yes. And congratulations to you, Fitz. Good luck with your pages.”

Wincing, he waved a brief goodbye as his eyes left the camera, already on to the next thing, and Jemma closed the call wearing a fond smile. Dear Fitz—he always knew the right thing to say to get her out of her head. Of course they would think of a way to bring the book in on schedule; of course the important thing was the sign of confidence in their work SHIELD showed by spotlighting _Sophia_. October and the release was still months away, and there had never been a problem she and Fitz couldn’t solve together in a matter of weeks. Somehow, everything seemed possible with him.

 

*

 

March being Fitz’s busy time, he didn’t have the mental energy to devote his attention to the problem of Jemma’s research—the strange hours he had to keep in order to get ahold of hoteliers and restaurateurs across Europe precluded much of a life at all, actually, though he wasn’t complaining more than usual about it. Once or twice she sent him a passage she found in some of her secondary source reading, asking his opinion on the translation, and if the ensuing conversation managed to cover their feelings about _The Terror_ (his: far too many intestines! hers: such sparse storytelling!) that was the most it managed. Up to his eyeballs, he almost forgot there was a problem at all until she sent him a text at the beginning of April:

_I’ve got an idea._

_About Ordeal By Innocence?_ he wrote back, sticking his pen between his lips so as to have both thumbs, _I still don’t think changing the doctor means they’ll change the killer. You can’t improve on a classic._

_And yet they let Branagh do Orient Express. But no, about my research. What if you come to Cornell with me?_

He stared at the screen, the pen falling out of his mouth as it dropped open. Go to Cornell? Help her in the active research, rather than just secondhand? He typed a few letters at random, stared at the screen some more, erased what he had written, started again, then gave it up as pointless and went to his contact list.

She picked up immediately. “Just listen.”

“Okay,” he said warily, “I’m listening.”

“If you come with me, we can get through the work twice as quickly. You can read the French in your head and give me the gist so I know if it matters—plus, Fitz, if we both go we can _each_ request fifteen items, which would be infinitely better. That’s literally twice as quickly.”

“Yes, but—”

“Only I’m a bit concerned,” she continued, “because my secondary sources are so rich, the story is getting so big—I need to be able to focus my research, and I haven’t really got the ability to camp at Cornell for the amount of time I would need. There’s 31 linear feet of documents there, Fitz, two thousand bound collections—how am I ever to get through it?”

He could almost hear her forehead wrinkling into the creased arch between her eyebrows. His own forehead was probably doing something similar, but he rubbed it away and wrenched his thoughts into some semblance of order. “And you absolutely can’t get to read there sooner, or again.” Her silence told him everything he needed to know. “Jemma, I don’t know—”

“I’ve done a bit of research,” she continued like she hadn’t heard him, “and it’s only two hours from where you are in Chicago to JFK, and tickets aren’t that much. There’s loads of hotels in Ithaca, where the university is; I’m sure we could find something reasonable, especially with six months’ jump on it.”

“Do you have final dates, then?” he asked, “I thought Bobbi was getting those to you later.”

“Yes—well, the week they want me there. We won’t have dates for the interviews and so forth until we get nearer. But I was thinking we could fly to JFK, then rent a car and drive to Cornell—it’s four hours, but that’s not ridiculous here—and then we could have a car when we needed to be in the city. Or you could stay in Ithaca, I suppose, and I could go to Manhattan. SHIELD’ll pay for a hotel for me. That might be better, actually, because you could keep going through the documents and put ones aside for me to see—”

“Jemma. Jemma.”

She stopped short in the middle of a sentence—holding back her excitement? Waiting for him to crush her idea? Regretting bringing it up in the first place? Wishing he had video-chatted her instead so they could read each other’s faces, he put a hand on the back of his neck and dropped his head. “Just, give me—a second. Truly, a second. I need to think about it.”

“Of course you do,” she said, “that’s why I texted you in the first place. You might not want to spend your money that way.” True, though the thought of how to pay for it had barely crossed his mind. “You might not be able to get time off, though isn’t October your quiet season?” It was, and he had already been planning to take some holiday, but— “Or, I suppose,” she said more quietly, “you might not want to do my research for me. Though it would really be with me.”

“No,” he said, almost surprising himself with how quickly the answer came, “no, that’s not it. I wouldn’t mind that. You know I like to learn about Science Heroines, and I’m going to look at all sooner or later.”

“Well, what then?”

His mouth opened, then shut, the physical embodiment of the typing ellipses he had avoided earlier. Like before, everything rushing through his mind sounded inadequate. Frankly, the only reason he could think of not to meet her in New York was that he had never met her in person anywhere at all, and that didn’t seem like a good enough reason to refuse. She was right—it would be more efficient for him and more helpful for her, and since he had the time and the funds...and New York State was supposed to be beautiful in the autumn. Manhattan he could do without, but he wouldn’t have to be there that long. And it might be nice, to meet her face to face. He had met most of the other authors he worked with at one time or another. No reason for her to be any different, just because their collaboration was clandestine.  

“Fitz? Are you there?”

“I’m here.” He took a deep breath, trying to will his pulse to a more sedate pace. “Then nothing. I think that sounds like a good idea.”

“Do you really?” Her voice sounded like the sun coming out. “You’re not just saying that.”

“No,” he said, his own voice growing in strength as his brain talked his nerves off the ledge, “no, it’s a great idea. Save a lot of steps for both of us, and much better for me to get the work done in my down season. And you’re right about requesting things. Yeah, let’s do it.”

Jemma was too English to squeal, but her fervent, “oh, _brill_ ,” was as close as he had ever heard her come. “I’ll send the details then, so you can look for flights, but don’t worry about the hotel. I’ll take care of it.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, fully aware her bank balance was in the black at least as tenuously as his. “I’m perfectly capable—”

“Of course you are, but you’re doing me a favor. I don’t want it to be more annoying for you than it has to be.”

 _Annoying_ was not the word he would use, but knowing her love for planning he agreed without further argument, only requesting she forward him any and all information he had about the trip as soon as she got it.

“Of course,” she said, “what do you think I do now? Nearly anything I hear from SHIELD I bring to you directly.”

“You do? Why?”

“Oh, I—” A beat of silence. “I’m not sure. You’re just the best person to talk to about it. Likely because you understand the business but aren’t connected to anyone I know. And I do the same for you, don’t I?”

As though he ever spoke to anyone else about his work—not even his mum knew as much of the process with its attendant frustrations as Jemma did. “Of course. We’re workplace-distance-sounding boards.”

“Shall I use that in the next acknowledgements? A bit of a mouthful, but it might work.” She made a little noise that was almost a laugh. “Fitz, I’m so—research will be so much easier this way, I think. I’m looking forward to it.”

Closing his eyes, he leaned back in his chair and felt the last of his nerves evaporate. “Me too.”

 

*

 

It seemed so easy when they first planned it—a hotel, a rental car, days in the archives, a day or a night in the city. As with everything in Jemma’s work, however, the reality quickly became more complicated. Cheap flights to and from New York didn’t exist on the weekends, pushing their arrival and departure to mid-week. By itself that wouldn’t have been so problematic, except that when her publicist sent her the list of scheduled events she had one Saturday night, one Sunday morning and several on Monday—meaning the exact middle of their trip would be spent in the city, breaking their research time in half.

“Well, what if I come in on Tuesday after your things?” Fitz suggested.

She shook her head, though he couldn’t see it on the other end of the phone. “That doesn’t make sense, because the whole point is for you to read through things first.”

“So what if we both go up on Wednesday or Thursday, then you leave for your events and come back to go through what I’ve looked at?”

“Then what’s the point of requesting items for myself? By the time I’m able to come back we’ll scarcely be able to look at them before leaving; you know we only have the items for a week. And anyway, Fitz, how will you get around for three days without a car?”

“It’s a college town. I can walk.”

“Not that kind of college town,” she sighed. “Well, we might have to do that, I suppose.”

But that tenuous plan went up in smoke when Bobbi told Jemma her presence was not only expected but required at SHIELD’s Fall List Gala on Sunday night. “And since you’ve managed to rope Fitz into this trip, we’ve got a ticket for him, too.”

“What?”

“By the way,” Bobbi continued, “I’ve never heard of a translator going on a research trip. Just research? No vacation?”

“Of course just research. What else would it be?”

“Mm. Hunter’s looking forward to seeing him.”

“Is that really a good idea?” she asked first, almost as a reflex, then realized a potentially bigger problem. “Fitz won’t like that very much. Not seeing your husband, I’m sure he’ll love that, but going to a party for SHIELD.”

Bobbi’s eyebrows lifted nearly to her hairline. “True, it doesn’t sound like him, but if he’s there as your guest it’s unlikely anyone could get him in trouble for it. He’s not going to be on the clock, is he?”

“He’s taking some holiday.” She thought for a moment, squaring her laptop with the edge of her desk. “Well, I’ll ask him, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he says no.”

In fact, she was very much surprised when he said yes.

“Hunter already messaged me about it,” he told her over video chat. “He invoked the sacred bond of O’Leary’s, Jemma—there’s nothing else to be done about it.”

She canted her head to the side, amused. “What’s O’Leary’s?”

“It’s the pub where we met, but that’s not what the bond is about. I can’t tell you the details, only that it involves a footie championship and some ferrets.”

“Ferrets?”

“I honestly can’t talk about it, Jemma. If I told you you might feel you had to go to the police.”

“Never mind, I don’t want to know.” Looking down at her keyboard, she wiped dust from around the keys, concentrating on making her laptop perfectly clean rather than the stinging thought that Fitz would do this Hunter a favor that could endanger his career, but not her. “Well, that makes our research more complicated, but I suppose it can’t be helped. Not if the sacred bond of O’Leary’s has been invoked.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but we can take pictures of the documents, yeah? I’ll work on translating those over the weekend. It’ll be all right.”

Even that would have been acceptable, except that at the beginning of October Fitz’s publishers sent him a brand-new manuscript to check ASAP—which, in their parlance, meant “within the next three weeks or else.”

“And did I remind them,” he railed to her on the phone, “that I had booked holiday six months ago, that I had plane tickets and reservations and surely anyone else would be better?”

“Of course you did,” she said hotly, more furious on his behalf than even he was. “And what did they say to that?”

“That ‘no one else would be able to do it in a timely fashion,’ that I’m ‘irreplaceable to the company,’ that they’ll give me more holiday later—” He broke off to curse fluidly for a minute, picking something off his desktop and chucking it across the room. From the lack of crashing, Jemma assumed it was something unbreakable and wished, not for the first time, she could be there to keep his hands from destruction when he got angry like this. Not that she blamed him, but there were better ways to deal with it than throwing things.

“Did you tell them to stuff it?”

Pulling a drawer open only to slam it shut, he appeared to have taken the edge of his anger and was able to meet her digital gaze again. “Of course I did—but not in so many words, so they thought it was a negotiation.” He put both hands up in the air. “So we agreed I’m getting as much done as I can in the next few weeks, and whatever’s left I have to take with me. It’s nominally holiday, but not actually.”

As a good friend Jemma had been doing her best to concentrate on Fitz’s problem, but she let out a sigh of relief when he answered her unspoken concern. “You’re still coming, then?”

“Yes.” He nodded firmly, mouth set and arms crossed over his chest. “I’ll be damned if I let them dictate my life like that. Nothing is going to keep us from these archives if I have to walk to Cornell.”

 

*

 

With the way their planning had gone, Jemma wouldn’t have been surprised if he _had_ been forced to walk, but time ran out before anything else could go wrong, and they both met their flights as scheduled on the third Wednesday afternoon in October. Hers even arrived a little early, giving her enough time to retrieve her bags and buy a drink before Fitz’s plane came in. And of course, time to think and _over_ think. Sitting in the coffee shop with two teas steaming faintly in front of her—one for her and another with an excessive amount of sugar for him—she found herself unable to stop twisting her fingers together. Logically, meeting Fitz face-to-face would be no different than meeting any of the myriad people she worked on her books with—most of them she had known for even longer than she had Fitz, and she had no qualms about the gala on Sunday. And yet. And yet, illogically, she had woken up this morning to the thought _I am going to see Fitz today_ and her heart hadn’t stopped beating double-time in all the hours since. “But it’s silly,” she said aloud, flipping over her phone to check his flight information for the dozenth time. “No reason to be nervous. It’s only Fitz.”

“I don’t know if that’s a compliment or an insult.”

And there he was, Fitz: wearing a familiar plaid shirt and wooly jumper, backpack slung over one shoulder and a duffle bag over the other, shifting his weight from foot to foot and his gaze from her to someplace over her shoulder. She knew his voice—of course she did—though hearing it vibrate through the air rather than two sets of speakers made it just different enough that she had to steady herself before rising to her feet. “Hi, Fitz.”

Running one finger under his backpack strap, he said “hi” without quite looking at her. “So, which is it?”

“Compliment,” she said quickly, “definitely a compliment. I wouldn’t be nervous to meet a friend at an airport normally, would you?”

“Dunno. S’pose it depends on why we were meeting.” He did look up then, relief in his eyes and a laugh in the corner of his mouth. “I mean, if it was because we were fleeing the country together or something—”

Phone cameras might be improving, Jemma thought, almost dazedly, but they did as much justice to reality as if they were early 2000s technology. Who would have guessed his eyes were so blue? “Why on earth—”

“You never know, Simmons. Our visas could be removed, suddenly. Or we could write something that made the country too hot to hold us.”

“Oh, very likely.” She laughed, which made his grin grow from one side of his mouth to the other, and seeing that made her decide to throw caution to the wind and do what she had been trying to talk herself out of since she left her flat this morning: assume they were the kind of acquaintances who comfortable with physical contact, and move forward to give him a hug. His arms fell naturally at her shoulders; he wasn’t as tall as she expected, she realized with a start, though she hadn’t actively spent time wondering how tall he was. With his baggage in the way, she only had time to notice that his jumper under her cheek felt cozier and smelt nicer than she would have expected before they stepped apart, both breathing—she thought—a little easier.

“Is that for me?” He nodded to the cup on the table and grabbed it at her answering nod. “The tea on the plane was dishwater.”

“What on earth made you drink it?”

“Desperation,” he said darkly, and took a sip. Pleasure spread over his face. “This is perfect, thanks. Did you want to sit, or should we just get on the road?”

She did want to sit, very much, but as it was nearly four-and-a-half hours to their hotel at Cornell she reluctantly indicated the latter. After a brief tussle over her bags, in which she maintained she was perfectly capable of rolling both suitcases and he agreed that she was but as he had an extra hand there was no reason for him to not take one, they made their way to the rental car area to pick up the economy sedan she had reserved, and then they were on the road. She and Fitz. In the same physical space.

Fitz fidgeted. Of course she knew that, but she hadn’t realized that the tapping and twiddling she saw over the camera would extend through his whole body—his knee bouncing up and down, his hands constantly adjusting the seatbelt and air vents. “Do you need it colder? Or warmer, I suppose?” she asked after she watched him close and open the vents for the fourth time.

He folded his hands together and put them in his lap, looking almost guilty even out of her peripherals. “No. Sorry.”

“It’s fine if you do; I’m not particularly bothered—”

“No, no, I’m fine. Just—yeah. Fine.”

“All right,” she said, unconvinced, but unwilling to press.

A few minutes later, he shut them again, then made a noise of disgust and sat on his hands. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

They drove in complete silence for fifteen minutes, Fitz looking out the window and Jemma staring at the road ahead, mind ticking rapidly through possible conversation topics. If they didn’t have conversation, this was going to be a very long trip—but why shouldn’t they have conversation? They had never run out of things to talk about before; more than once they had talked through appointments or into the wee hours of the morning. Of all the things she had been nervous about for this week, a dearth of discussion had never been one.

At minute twenty, Fitz made another exasperated noise. “This is ridiculous. If we weren’t in the same time zone we’d probably be talking right now.”

Flicking on her indicator to change lanes, she heaved a relieved sigh. “Exactly what I was thinking. This is new, but there’s nothing about it to change the way we’ve been.”

“Except that we haven’t got a set agenda.”

“We do, it’s just a long term agenda. It doesn’t all have to be done straight away.” She frowned. “Though, not particularly long term. We have got a lot to do in not very much time.”

He nodded. “Do you want to make a plan of attack? I’ve been looking through the archive notes, and the curator was helpful with more specific information. If we have a strategy—”

“Yes, agreed. We’ve got to move as efficiently as possible.”

Reaching into the backseat, he pulled his computer from his backpack and brought it to rest in his lap. “More efficiently than you think, I’m afraid. I didn’t quite manage to get through the whole book, so I’m going to have to be working some of the time. But it’s Europe, you know, so with the time difference—”

“It’s all right, Fitz, truly. We knew you might have to be working.”

“As idiotic as it is,” he snorted. “Okay, so we’ve got Madame Lavoisier’s correspondence in boxes 2 and 48. I expect you’ll want to look at those first?”

“I thought so, yes. Of course what I really want to get a look at is her travel case—can you imagine, Fitz? Even with gloves, to touch something she carried around with her and used often? That might be my favorite part of writing.”

“It’s not really anything to do with writing,” he said, closing the vents for what she hoped was the last time. “But yeah, it’s pretty cool. You can do that while I scan through box 2, maybe?”

“Yes, that makes sense.”

And with that they were off, their new proximity forgotten in the pattern of their long-practiced patter, business to rabbit trail and back again a hundred times. Talking hard, they would have missed their route in the middle of Pennsylvania if the GPS hadn’t loudly demanded their attention; even the brief stop at a service station to use the toilet and purchase snacks only gave them each a chance to catch their breath and rethink their arguments. Two hours later, they had thoroughly hashed out the best professional on _Strictly Come Dancing_ , discussed Brexit until too frustrated to continue, and come up with a plan for research they both agreed would give them the best chance at success. Fitz saved the spreadsheet and shut his computer, reaching into the bag of snacks to pull out another packet of crisps. Jemma wrinkled her nose but didn’t comment. He already knew her opinion of his snacking habits.

Chewing thoughtfully, Fitz pulled his seatbelt so he could better face her. “I hope the curator won’t mind if we look at each other’s requests. We’re both cleared to look at the documents, so it shouldn’t be an issue, but librarians can be particular. Remember that one that made you tie up your hair before you opened any of the books?”

“Oh, no, she was lovely,” she protested, “just, perhaps, a bit invested in the material. I doubt there will be any trouble; in my correspondence with the curator I mentioned you as my research partner.”

 He didn’t say anything in response, only crunched a crisp and looked out the window. Casting a suddenly nervous glance sideways, Jemma bit her lip. That wasn’t too much, was it? He hadn’t minded being her collaborator or consultant and _partner_ didn’t seem that different, but perhaps—“What did you tell her?”

She could hear the sound of his swallow. “Er, just that I was helping with your research. Don’t think I gave myself a title. Assistant, maybe.”

“Oh, that’s not very fair. You do far more work than a mere assistant.”

“In my experience,” he said, rueful, “assistants do more of the work for less of the credit, but okay. Let’s get our story straight. Research partners.”

He lingered over the words like they were a fine wine—not that he’s a wine drinker; they’ve disagreed about that more than once—and she found she liked the sound of it very much. “I’ll promote you in the acknowledgements, then. Can I mention this trip, or is that too much information?”

“It’s fine. I told them I was going to Florida for my holiday.”

“That doesn’t sound remotely like something you’d enjoy.”

“No, but do they know that?” Balling up the empty crisp packet, he shoved it into the designated rubbish sack. “Although, Manhattan isn’t particularly my idea of a good time either and I’m going there.”

“A brief stopover,” she promised, “there, and back, and that’s all. And I’ve planned something actually fun for Sunday.”

“Are you saying research isn’t fun?”

“Never.”

“And there’s the Jemma Simmons I know.”

“Haven’t I been this whole time?”

She laughed as she said it, but he responded seriously. “Yeah, I think you have. I didn’t know—but yeah. You are.” He looked down at his fingers tapping against the closed computer. “Um, am I?”

If she hadn’t been driving, she would have been tempted to look him over from tip to toe, comparing her last eight years of experience through screens and speakers with the man-in-the-flesh: Did his voice sound the same? Did the familiar facial expressions mean the same thing she thought they did? Was her impression of his fierce intelligence and quiet kindness accurate, or was it only an effect of the distance? But maybe it was for the best that they had got directly into the car and she didn’t have more than a brief glance to replace _knowing_ him with _seeing_ him. Of course he was the Fitz she knew. Who else would he be? Breaking one of her ironclad driving rules, she took one hand from the steering wheel and reached for his shoulder. “The very same. Do you want some actual food? You must be ravenous.”

His jumper, she was pleased to note, was just as soft upon second impression.


	2. Chapter 2

Stopping for dinner turned out to be a bad decision. For whatever reason, the forty-five minutes they spent at one of the ubiquitous chain diners that littered American roadways made the difference between clear roads and congestion, and they found themselves creeping along at glacial speeds. Fitz watched Jemma’s face grow progressively tighter and her knuckles progressively whiter. She didn’t like driving, he knew; he should have insisted on renting the car in his name so he could drive, but she had been adamant that he would not pay for expenses she would have on her own, and he had already pressed her on her suitcase. Next time, he wouldn’t back down so easily. Despite his best attempts to distract her, the frazzled frizzles of hair around her face spoke to her heightened levels of anxiety, and conversation died out entirely when the fifth hour on the road came and went with no end in sight. They both heaved a sigh of relief when they finally pulled up to their hotel, over six hours after leaving the airport.

Jemma turned to him without releasing her seatbelt, her smile exhausted. “Well, that’s done at least. I’m rather excited about lying down, aren’t you?”

“Not as much as you are, probably.”

“I’m perfectly fine,” she said stoutly, but she didn’t put up an ounce of fuss when he took the handles of both her suitcases and rolled them into the lobby, joining Jemma at the end of a long line of middle-aged couples. The desk clerk eyed them warily, which Fitz thought a bit much. “Just because,” he grumbled in an undertone, “we haven’t got matching designer luggage and look like we’ve been driving for two days, unlike these people—“

“Hush, Fitz. Our money is as good as anyone else. And we’ve got a reservation; they can’t refuse us service.”

And, when they made it to the counter and Jemma answered in the affirmative to the question “reservation?” the desk clerk proved her right. Suddenly smiles, he took her name and card and started clacking at the keyboard. “Romantic getaway? I assume you two aren’t here for Family Weekend. You look almost young enough to be students.”

Fitz felt Jemma’s shoulder press against his as she laughed politely, no doubt a silent warning to keep his indignation to himself. “No, not a romantic getaway. We’re here to do research. Is it Family Weekend? That explains why the lot is so full.”

“Everywhere is full,” the clerk said, “this is one of the busiest weekends of the year in Ithaca. You’re lucky you got your reservation in early, or you might not be able to find a bed. Ah, here we are.” He pulled two plastic keycards from the printer and set them on the counter. “Room 616. Will there be anything else?”

“No, that’s all.” Jemma picked up the cards and looked at him expectantly. “Fitz?”

A sinking suspicion appeared in his stomach. One room, two card keys, and a general sense that she was waiting for him to do something… “Jemma,” he said, turning away from the already-concerned desk clerk, “I’ve just realized that when you sent me the name of the hotel you meant me to get my own room.”

Her eyebrows, which had been quizzical, dropped and furrowed together. “Yes, of course—Fitz! You didn’t?”

“Well, you said you’d take care of the hotel—I figured I’d pay you back!”

She sighed, rolling her eyes to the heavens. “Ugh, Fitz, I said I’d find the hotel—meaning the hotel with the best ratio of price to proximity—which I have, though of course you won’t be able to get the room at the same rate—“

“Or at any rate,” the desk clerk butted in, making a conciliatory gesture at the people behind them in line. “I am afraid we’re all booked up. No rooms available.”

His sinking suspicion dropped to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Jemma’s eyes widened and she reeled back to the counter. “No rooms at all? It doesn’t have to be a nice one.”

“None at all, not here. Or probably anywhere.”

Fitz could almost see the million thoughts tumbling through Jemma’s mind—easy, since similar ones had gone through his a few moments before—and he watched her hit the obvious solution with a thud. A whole strand of hair slipped loose from her plait and fell in front of her eyes, not even sort of hiding her dismay. She took a deep breath. “Well, I suppose we’ll have to—”

His thought process being a step or two beyond hers, he spoke quickly: “No, don’t worry about it. I’ll just—”

“You can’t drive the car, Fitz, it’s against—”

“I know, I wasn’t going to—”

“Sir, madam,” the desk clerk broke in, “please, can you take this conversation elsewhere? We really can’t do anything more to assist you.”

Scuttling like crabs to a clear spot near a giant decorative pillar, they resumed their conversation in near whispers. Jemma crossed her arms over her chest and lifted her chin, skewering him with a look unfamiliar only because he didn’t usually have to bend his neck to meet it. “Well, have you got a better idea to solve this mess?”

“I can sleep in the car and use your shower in the morning. Not an issue.” He hoped he sounded more firm than he felt; the prospect of three nights in the backseat of a Ford Focus did not fill him with glee, but beat the alternative.

Jemma scoffed. “That’s a better idea than—”

“—than you driving me around til all hours hoping somewhere there’s a half-decent hotel with an open room?” He shook his head, crossing his arms in his turn. “You’re exhausted. You shouldn’t have to be punished for my mistakes.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!”

“I’m not! It’s fine, I’ll sleep in the car.”

“You’ll sleep with me!”

He blushed automatically, red even before he looked around and saw half the lobby staring at them openly. Jemma, flushed herself, took him by the elbow and pulled him into the shadow of the pillar, where his duffle bag—still slung over his shoulder—bounced him off the wall and made him almost stumble into her. Her other hand reached out to grab the arm she wasn’t already holding, and there they were, ready to do a luggage-burdened two-step. His tongue still curled up on itself, he held his hands open and waited for her to continue.

“Not  _sleep with me_ ,” she said, obviously trying valiantly to play it off, “I just mean—well, it sleeps two. We’re both adults; we should be able to manage it. Really, Fitz, sleeping in the car is going to be terrible for your back and you’ll be cross if you don’t sleep well, which will be terrible for our research.”

“But—”

Her iron jaw was back, all trace of embarrassment vanished. “Fitz. We can have a scene in this hotel lobby at nine-thirty at night if you like, but I must warn you it will end exactly the same way as if you simply agreed with me now.”

He looked down at her, felt her firm grip on his elbows, and knew she was right. He had been traveling all day; he was tired; he was hungry; he had no available reserves to win an argument with Jemma. _Next_ time, then, would be the time he stood his ground. Wordlessly, he held out his hand and opened and shut his fingers. “Come on then. Let’s have the key.”

But, since he was loaded down with bags, she ended up being the one to open the door, which no doubt gave her the extra second to steady herself before she turned to him and said, “if you don’t mind, I’m going to take a shower to get rid of traveling. Take whatever side you like.” Then, taking the smaller of her suitcases from him, she disappeared into the bathroom, leaving him to drop the rest of the bags to the floor and stare at the large, white, _sole_ bed in front of him. Maybe, just maybe, he should have chosen this time to stand his ground.

His first impulse was to put his pajamas on and pretend to be asleep before she came out, but upon further reflection he decided (a) he might like a shower as well and (b) she would never believe that he was tired enough to go to sleep before ten, even if his internal clock did say it was eleven. Instead, sitting at the little desk, he pulled out his work and went at it head down, ignoring both the noise of the shower and the expanse of the bed behind him. Fortunately fact checking required careful attention so he had worked himself into some semblance of chill by the time the bathroom door opened, and Jemma’s attempt at a breezy “bathroom’s yours, if you like,” didn’t even make him flinch.

“Thanks,” he said without turning around, “I’ll go in a minute. Just want to get this section finished.”

Rustling behind him, the sound of a zipper. “Will you be working the rest of the night, or did you want to watch something? I think we can get Netflix on the television.”

“Yeah, let’s do that—my eyes are kind of crossing.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head, then turned around with a question. It died unasked as his brain signals crossed along with his eyes. He had somehow forgotten that Jemma existed with him in this physical space, and the sight of her in pajamas and a thick cardigan with her slightly-damp hair tied up on the top of her head brought all the weirdness rushing back. He had seen that blue polka-dot top before, but he hadn’t realized it was part of a _pajama set_. He kind of regretted knowing it now. He’d never be able to forget it again.

Her hands came up to wrap backwards around her throat. “Um, was there something particular you wanted to watch, or...?”

Too late, he realized he had been staring. “No! Er, no, nothing particular. I’m, erm, I’m. Going to go.” He slammed shut his computer and shoved away from the desk, going to his bag to pull out his shower necessities without looking more than an inch off the carpet. “Just whatever you like.”

Not until he was in the shower, overwhelmed by the scent of fruit and girl, did he realize he had been embarrassingly obvious about his desire to get out of the room. No way that hadn’t been awkward. Thunking his head against the wall, he groaned. It had to go wrong sometime, clearly. The first weird bit of the car ride aside, being with Jemma in person was almost as easy—and actually more enjoyable—than being with her long-distance; he should have known something would happen to mess it up. His own stupid fault, too. Well, if the awkwardness was his problem fixing it was his problem as well, and he had just better figure out a way to let her know he wasn’t going to be a red-faced cad all week.

And hadn’t he spent at least five years wishing, he thought as he moodily pulled a white t-shirt over his head, wishing that they had met in an ordinary way and could be ordinary friends, instead of merely colleagues with the same taste in television and a persistent homesickness for Hobnobs? This could be his one and only chance. If he messed it up, he would never forgive himself.

When he went back into the main room, Jemma was in bed with her knees pulled up to her chest and the covers up to her chin. “You didn’t choose a side of the bed,” she said without looking at him.

“Because I’m not particular.” He closed the bathroom door carefully. “Did you choose something to watch?”

“What about Bake-off?”

“Perfect.” She had left him the side of the bed closest to the door, and he sat on the edge to pull on a pair of socks. His back to her, he could almost feel the tension between them. He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. About the room. I should have thought it through. Tomorrow I’ll do some calling, see if I can find another place.”

She didn’t speak for a second, and he spent the time imagining which of her disapproving expressions graced her face. Then: “This will make it easier to ensure we get an early start in the morning. Imagine me pounding on your door in the morning, trying to wake you at a decent hour!”

Letting the breath out, he allowed himself a smile before swinging his legs up to the bed and fixing the pillow behind his back. “I’m always awake at a decent hour. Your idea of decent and mine are distinctly different, that’s all. And please remember I’m an hour behind this time zone.”

Pressing a button on the remote and sliding down the headboard, she turned her head enough to give him three-quarters of a smile. “So, will six do then?” He sputtered, involuntarily, and she laughed as Noel and Sandy started their recap. “Never mind, Fitz. We’ll get a good night’s sleep, I promise.”

*

Fitz slept so well, in fact, that from the minute he turned off the television and put his head on the pillow, he might as well have been in his own bed. In his own bed, though, he wouldn’t have been woken up by sunlight hitting his face like a hammer and a cheery “good morning!” Half-hiding his face in the pillow, he made a noise that was meant to be a word but sounded more like “grmmph.”

“Come on, Fitz.” The voice spoke again, sounding familiar but odd. “We don’t want to be late.”

Cracking open one eye, he saw Jemma standing at the foot of the bed, already dressed and holding a mug. “That’s it,” she said, smiling encouragingly, “breakfast is in an hour, but I’ve made tea already.”

“An hour?” He opened his other eye and sat up, refusing to think about what his hair might be doing. “How long do you think it takes me to get ready?”

“I really couldn’t say. I just wanted to be safe. The Reading Room opens at ten, and it takes six minutes to drive to the library. I thought we might walk, but the roads aren’t made for pedestrians. We have to register beforehand, so I’d like to leave by nine-thirty—”

“But Simmons”—he had, by now, reached for his phone and seen the time—“it’s seven-thirty. I could sleep for another forty-five minutes and still be there in time. What time did you get up?”

“Quarter til six!” she said, brighter than the sun, “as always. Went to the gym, had a proper shower, dried my hair, etc. Do you want this tea or not? I’ve already put the sugar in, so it’ll go to waste if you don’t drink it.”

He sighed, scooting up to a sitting position. “Give it here.”

Fitz’s sleeping habits, particularly when he was actively fact checking, had no semblance of consistency, so his body had learned _tea_ meant _we’re awake now_ and he was able to get up to Jemma’s morning speed without too much trouble. As soon as he was ready, they went down to the continental breakfast (him: waffles, eggs, and a second helping of sausage; her: yoghurt and a bagel) with their own thermoses of tea.

“Is hotel tea or airplane tea worse?” he mused.

She looked up from her phone and canted her head, finishing off her spoonful of yoghurt. “Airplane tea, don’t you think? They so often don’t have proper milk. Fitz, I’ve been thinking, since the reading rooms are only open for six hours, could we possibly skip lunch and have dinner early? I just don’t want to lose any more time than we must.”

He preferred to never skip a meal if possible, but understood her argument and agreed without a fuss. “I might have to dash out and eat an apple or something, but I won’t take long. I did have something to ask you, though. About the research.”

She indicated he should continue.

“Basically, what I’m doing is triage, right? Figuring out which documents are most important you see first. To do that best, I need to know: why are you writing about the Lavoisiers?”

She swallowed quickly, making a face as though something hadn’t gone down right. Her eyebrows stayed in the same confused position when the rest of her face cleared. “What do you mean?”

“I mean. I mean, there’s something about this story that draws you—of all the unknown Science Heroines you _could_ write about, you chose Marie. And her husband, I guess, who isn’t even a Heroine. So, why? That makes a difference to what documents are important, that’s all.”

She put her phone face down on the table, squaring it neatly with the edge of her plate, then did the same with her spoon and her knife. Her eyelashes cast shadows on her cheeks as she concentrated on making them straight. So that was why her camera sometimes moved in the middle of a conversation, he realized suddenly, and understood more than one talk better than he had before.

“The thing is,” she said after a minute, “I’m closer to an answer than I was, but I’m still not certain. I think it has something to do with Marie’s work.”

“Her engravings for the books?” he asked when she paused, “her translations for Antonin? Or getting his work back from the Jacobins or whoever?”

“Yes. No.” Jemma sighed, and her napkin joined the rest of her breakfast on the table. “It’s just that _all_ her work is supportive in that way; she isn’t like my other Science Heroines who contributed to her field on her own. But that’s been the lot of so many women.”

“But you haven’t written about those women.”

“No,” she agreed, sitting up straighter, “but I should. Just because Marie’s accomplishments are traditionally feminine—art, letters, socializing—doesn’t mean they aren’t worthwhile. Antonin couldn’t have done his work without her, and then we wouldn’t have the field of chemistry as we know it today.” Her eyes were glowing with righteous conviction. “Work we can’t see is still _work_ , and worthwhile, even if it isn’t glamorous and doesn’t make you famous. That’s important. I think it’s worth writing about.”

 Carried along with her, Fitz felt his heart beating faster. “That sounds like a good reason to me.”

“It is. But it’s not the whole reason, I don’t think. Not yet.” Something in her softened, and she smiled—still bright, but not as fierce. “Perhaps we’ll figure it out today? Perhaps you’ll figure it out for me.”

“Won’t know until we try.” Crumpling his own napkin, he tossed it on the table and stood, gesturing towards the door. “Should we begin?”

Swept up in her enthusiasm, he hadn’t checked the time, and they ended up reaching the library well before the research rooms opened. “It’s all right,” Jemma said, “we can check in and look at some of the exhibitions beforehand.” So they did, relinquishing their bags and identification to tuck their digital camera, notebooks, pencils and computers under their arms and in their pockets and wander around the wide white galleries. Fitz, his mind already strategizing his personal plan of attack, found them interesting but not fascinating; Jemma, on the other hand, barely read half a plaque before moving onto the next, even in the exhibit about women’s suffrage at Cornell. “You’re antsy,” he whispered at her the fifth time he saw her look at her watch.

“I’m excited,” she corrected, “this is my favorite part.”

“They’re all your favorite parts.”

She shot him _a look_. “Fitz, it’s 9:55. Do you think they’ll let us in yet?”

They did not. Still, it was only about another ten minutes until Fitz and Jemma were settled at the two desks piled high with their requested items, their gloves on and their spreadsheet ready to reference. Jemma swept her hair over her shoulder and looked down reverently at Marie-Anne Lavoisier’s travel case, which sat in the middle of her workspace as though it really were the stack of books it appeared to be. “Look, Fitz. This was hers. She touched it.”

“Yeah,” he said, moving aside the foam book stand so he could lay out the letters that were his assignment, “she touched all these, too. Probably most things in these boxes.”

“Oh, but this is different.” She ran one finger along the top of the box. “She carried this with her on holiday. She used this comb, these little pots of cosmetics. It’s very personal. I feel like I’m about to meet her, properly.”

He may as well have not been there anymore; she was so _focused_ on the item in front of her. Her eyes shone, her mouth stretched into a wide grin, she almost bounced as she lifted the lid. It was adorable, Fitz thought, and immediately retracted the word. “Are you always like this starting research?” he said, pausing with the first folder in his hand.

She looked up at him like she was surprised he was there. “I don’t know,” she said. “You’re the first person to see me start research. Let me know next time.”

Warmth spread through his chest, and he had to duck his head to keep from saying something embarrassing. _Next time_. But there wouldn’t be a next time if they didn’t get cracking now—they were already three minutes behind schedule. That in mind, Fitz put the folder down on the table and started scanning it: “ _Nous avons en effet Monsieur couru les plus grands dangers, à présent que mon ame est un peu remise du spectacle effroyable dont j'ai été témoin…”_

They worked in near silence for three hours without stopping, at which point Fitz ducked out to the cafe in the adjacent library and wolfed down a sandwich. He was, he thought, decently ahead of his self-imposed schedule and could afford some proper nutrition. Upon returning to the Reading Room, he went round to Jemma’s side of the table and touched her shoulder with two fingers.

She jumped, and his hand slipped to her shoulder blade to steady her. He liked the feel of her jumper under his palm; it was much softer than any of his. Realizing in the next instant that she was absolutely fine, he jerked his hand away and shoved it in his pocket. “You should eat,” he whispered, “there’s a cafe out there that’s fast.”

Shaking her head, she indicated the piles in front of her. “There’s so much to do, Fitz, and we only have another three hours today.”

“And six tomorrow, and a few on Saturday, and more next week. You have time to eat an orange.”

She huffed, pushing hair off her forehead with her wrist. “Oh, all right. I’ll just finish this document and then I’ll go.”

From his position just behind her, he could see the scrawled pages of notes over her shoulder: _is Franklin just being kind? was he that kind of man?_ and _read about history of nitric acid experimentation_ and _imagine learning English just to translate scientific texts—why would she do that? Did she volunteer, or did he ask? Or does it matter_? “Getting good stuff?” he asked, pleased to note that she had agreed that the letter about paint was an interesting insight.

“Fitz, it’s amazing. I’ve never been so—ideas are sparking. I think I know how the book ought to begin, if I don’t find anything to contradict it. I—” She looked around at the other patrons and put a finger over her lips. “We’ll talk later,” she said, even more quietly. “Tonight. Write things down if you think of them.”

So they did, scribbling notes on bits of paper and stuffing them in their pockets or, when very excited, getting the other’s attention by tapping on the desk with one finger and shoving the notebook across the table. Mostly, though, they just worked: following Marie’s trail through long-forgotten lab notes and hasty business documents, watching her interact with her husband and his male colleagues, marvelling at her determination to get what was hers after her husband’s untimely execution. As he whipped through the letters and moved on to the official documents, Fitz had the heady sensation of diving into a pool at the deep end. His work dealt in facts, not speculation; if he imagined what a chateaubriand might taste like as he verified that it cost €125, it was as much as he did. Even for Jemma’s other books, he had translated the documents out of context and not seen them again until she sent him her first drafts to look over. But this! This was like when he picked up his first German grammar book and memorized the declension charts in ten minutes flat. Sitting here with these two-hundred-year-old-letters in his hands and Jemma catching his eye across the desk, something new had begun.

“It’s official,” he said as they walked out of the library just after closing time, “research is my favorite part, and not just because it’s the bit I have to do with. Old documents are amazing. Can’t think why I haven’t had anything to do with them before.”

“You did seem to rather take to it,” Jemma said, wrapping her scarf around her neck and grinning over the blue-and-grey stripes. “Not every day is that exciting—tomorrow, for example, probably won’t be. But I do have a few things I’d like to follow, and oh, Fitz”—she patted her jacket pockets only to realize they were empty—“bother, where’s that note—I had a few things to ask you about the translation of Antoine’s letter from prison, if we can do that tonight it would be brilliant. Oh, unless.” Her face dimmed, excitement fading into resignation. “Have you got your own work to do? There hasn’t been much time for it, I’m afraid.”

He cast his mind to the files waiting impatiently on his computer, each demanding several hours of his undivided attention, and then reeled it back in. He didn’t want to think about that right now. “I’ve got some calls to make in the morning,” he admitted, “couldn’t set them up any sooner. But they’ll be done in plenty of time to get to the Reading Room.”

“Having had breakfast?”

“Of course,” he said, aghast she would think otherwise, “I don’t make a habit of skipping meals. For everybody’s sake.”

“In which case,” she said, pulling the car keys from her purse, “let’s find something to eat quickly, and fall back to the hotel to sort today’s findings and strategize for tomorrow. And you can do your own work then, if you like.”

“Sure.” Opening the passenger side door, he paused as a thought struck him. “Or.” He glanced down, away from her face over the top of the car. “Or I could try to find somewhere else to stay. There’s probably still time.”

“Oh!”

She sounded—surprised? She looked away just as he looked up, biting her lip briefly before turning back to him with a quick nod. “If you’d rather,” she said, voice brisk in the way that meant she really hoped he wouldn’t argue with her, “of course, you must do what makes you most comfortable. Only I did some research last night and it seems that family weekend goes through ‘til Sunday; I’d be surprised if you found anything before Saturday night at least. It might be easier to just stay. If you’re alright with that.”

He took his turn to look away, needing just a second to think without the implicit pressure of her brown eyes. She clearly didn’t think it would be strange to continue as they were; her matter-of-fact tone proved that beyond question. So it was just him who felt like a gawky Year Ten, unsure what to do in a room with a bed and a pretty girl in her pajamas. Not that—his mother had raised him to be a gentleman, he wasn’t going to _do_ anything, but— Well, if she didn’t mind he supposed he could manage. For all his awkwardness last night, it hadn’t ended badly; as far as he knew they had kept to their own sides of the bed, and their different waking patterns had minimized issues in the morning. And it had been easier to get a good start this morning, just as she predicted, and it was just two more nights, after all. Put like that, there was no reason to go to all the effort to end in the same place. Pajamas were just pajamas, after all. “Okay,” he said, and slung his backpack into the car. “Where are we eating? I’m starving.”

*

After getting dinner at the first restaurant they came to that wasn’t choked with parents treating their college students, they returned to the hotel and spent the evening working: Jemma at the desk, wearing another jumper layered over the first and happily sorting each piece of new information into its proper place in her complicated research system; Fitz on the bed, all but silent as he did whatever his own work required but ready to drop it and offer an opinion or comment on any question she might ask. Around eight she made tea and brought out a roll of digestives, which they finished off easily while arguing about the inevitability of Napoleon’s rise. Around ten, Fitz stood up and stretched. “I’ve got to get to bed,” he said, “I’ve got some calls to make early tomorrow. It won’t bother you, will I?”

She turned in the chair and bit back a smile at the sight of his ruffled hair. “Oh, I doubt it, I’m up so early. Will I bother you? Turn out the light if you need to; I’ll be all right with the desk light here.”

“Haven’t bothered me yet. Have you got the plan for tomorrow ready?”

“Not yet. We can go over it at breakfast?”

“As long as you don’t expect me to talk.”

He disappeared into the bathroom and she returned to her work, peering at Fitz’s scribbled translation of a laboratory report as she tried to transcribe it. “Fitz,” she said when she heard the door open, “what’s this word here? Are you sure you translated it?”

“Let me see.”

She picked up the note, intending to hand it to him, but before she could turn he came up behind her and leaned over her shoulder, his left arm propping up his weight against the desk and his right draped across the back of her chair. His face hovered two inches from hers, as near as their embrace at the airport but from a completely different angle. Like this, she could see the length of his eyelashes, watch his eyes moving rapidly across the page, notice the corner of his mouth moving as he breathed. She sucked in a breath, startled, and found it smelled like him.

“It’s not translated.”

She had to keep herself from jumping—if she had, her nose would have hit his cheek—and she heard herself repeating his words, foolishly. “Not translated?”

“I’m not sure what it is. Contextually, it’s got something to do with heat, but it’s not a normal word for it. I’ve never seen it before.”

“Oh,” she said, pulling the paper back more directly in front of her, “it must be caloric. That would make sense. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” And he stood up, gone as quickly as he came. She exhaled slowly, aware of her heart thumping rapidly. Goodness, he had really surprised her.

The bed creaked, covers rustling, and the light behind her went out. “Good night, Jemma. Good work.”

“Good night, Fitz.”

Before long, his breathing slowed and deepened. Jemma—who had been very intentionally focused on her work as he tried to get to sleep—relaxed as well, returning to her earlier levels of concentrated productivity. Brief hiccup of the last few minutes aside, this had been one of the most successful days of research she had ever had. She had known from the beginning that Fitz’s expertise would allow for more efficiency, but she hadn’t expected his mere presence to inspire better _work_. Having his translations immediately at hand to interact with sparked new ideas, and his questions and commentary helped her direct her otherwise rabbit-trail investigations. More than once she had marked a digital notecard with the tag _F_ , a silent reminder of his contributions. Even if he wouldn’t let her thank him as he deserved, she wasn’t going to forget about it.

Her work done for the night, she slipped into bed and curled up on her side, brain still busy with today’s reading and tomorrow’s agenda. She would take pictures of Marie’s engravings for Antoine’s textbook while Fitz continued pounding away at the legal documents, then if he finished that he would go through the photocopies of documents held in other libraries...unless he wouldn’t mind going through their expense records for her... She huffed, opening her eyes to stare at the ceiling. If she was ever to get to sleep, she needed to calm her mind—yes, so far this trip had felt rather like Christmas, but that was no reason not to get her necessary six hours. Fitz, sleeping on his back with one hand on his chest, had no problem doing so; she ought to follow his example.

Rolling onto her other side, Jemma put her hands under her cheek and watched his chest go up and down, matching her breathing to his. As she did so, she decisively shoved Marie and Antoine out of her mind and thought, instead, of the man beside her—not that strange thirty seconds where he had almost seemed unfamiliar, but the entirety of the day preceding. Before this trip, Jemma thought—when she stopped to think about it—that she knew Fitz fairly well. After nearly eight years of collaboration, she was intimately familiar with his least favorite adjectives and the turns of his sentences; after nearly eight years of conversation, she knew his unconscious tendencies and his intentional character. She could name his favorite color (blue), his favorite food (his mum’s spag bol), his favorite monkey (rhesus macaques). And yet there was so much about him she hadn’t known: He didn’t listen to music in the car, because his brain was loud enough by itself and he didn’t need anything distracting him from keeping to the right side of the road. If he was going to be at home for any length of time, he took off his shoes and padded around in his socks. Though he _could_ hoover up an entire portion of chips by himself, he would never finish them off without asking if she wanted the last few. And—more surprising than any of those, which seemed to her to be reasonable extensions of the Fitz she known before—she could spend 24 hours straight with him and still look forward to more. Two- and three-hour conversations weren’t very much in the scheme of things; she had been a bit concerned that so much time together would end in a mutual exhaustion. That had happened to her with more than one friend. But not, apparently, with him. He wasn’t like anyone else. She rather thought she might never get tired of him.

Deep breaths coming more naturally, she felt a smile creep over her face. Fortunately, there was plenty more to come.  

*

She woke up to his voice. At first, with her eyes still closed and the sounds not making sense, she thought she might still be asleep but as she came more firmly into the land of the living she realized he wasn’t speaking English.

“ _Wie teuer ist dein teuerstes Zimmer? und am wenigsten?”_ A pause. “ _Ja, und akzeptieren Sie Kinder?_ ”

She opened her eyes. Fitz sat sideways at the desk in pajama pants and her favourite of his jumpers, his legs jutting out into the room, his phone to his ear, his pen flicking back and forth between his fingers in a blur. As she watched, he put the pen between his lips and twisted sideways to type, then removed it to ask something else. “ _Und für Ihr Frühstück gibt es eine zusätzliche Gebühr?_ ”

It must be German, she realized, he must be speaking to an innkeeper or a restaurant owner or something of the sort, verifying facts for this new travel guide. She hadn’t realized that when he said _calls_ he didn’t mean with his publisher. So this was his work, she thought with a little thrill. This was something new. Adjusting her head on the pillow, she let her eyes half close and watched him through her lashes. He had turned on the desk light, setting off golden glints in his hair and beard; one socked foot crossed over the other and shook from side-to-side. He was getting a hole, she noticed with fondness. The pen resumed its journey.

“ _Ist der nächste Bahnhof ...ja. Und wie viel kostet ein Taxi von dort zu Ihnen?_ ”

Funny, she thought dreamily, she had always heard German was an ugly language, but it didn’t sound so when he spoke it. His own accent all but disappeared, to her ears, and his mouth shaping the words...he really had such an expressive mouth...

Her eyes flew open and she sat straight up, horrified at her train of thought. Was she checking out Fitz? _Fitz?_ Her translator-cum-fact checker-cum-first reader, her brilliant collaborator and genius research partner, her—well, Fitz?

“ _Stört es dich, einen Moment zu warten?”_

Yes, of course, she had always thought he was handsome, but in the distant, irrelevant to one’s life sort of way movie stars are handsome. What did it matter to her that his hands were delicately deft and his eyes bluer than the South Seas? It was his brain that mattered, and his heart, and his fine turns of phrase. Those were the qualities that had drawn her in. That’s what their relationship was built on.

“Jemma? Are you all right?”

She looked up sharply and found he had dropped his phone to his shoulder and was now giving her a concerned look. “I’m fine,” she said, hoping that he would chalk the unsteadiness of her voice to just-waking gravel. “What time is it?”

“Half five, or thereabouts. Sorry to wake you. Do you want me to—”

“No, no. You’re fine.” _More than that_ , her traitorous brain inserted, and she flipped back the covers emphatically to muffle the thought. “I’m going to the gym. Please, don’t mind me.”

He didn’t look convinced, but returned the phone to his ear and resumed his conversation. “ _Ich entschuldige mich. Was hast du gesagt_?”

Resolutely ignoring the shivers going up her spine, she gathered her exercise things and went into the bathroom, slumping against the door as soon as it closed behind her. She could still hear the rumble of Fitz’s voice from the other side, but it was quiet enough that she could almost ignore it in favour of giving herself a stern talking-to. “This will not do,” she said under her breath, glaring at herself in the mirror. “You’re here to work, not moon over Fitz. His presence is meant to help your work, not distract you from it. Do not spoil this, Jemma.”

Her mirror self nodded agreement and Jemma, back straight and chin up, went about beginning her day as normal. After all, they had a good deal of work to do, exciting work that required their full attention; what were men, even suddenly distractingly handsome ones, compared to documents and timelines? Nothing.

At least, not much.

At least, most men weren’t.

Fortunately, she had a great deal of mental fortitude. She had always been able to concentrate on her work, no matter what personal matters demanded her consideration; she had written her thesis in the two weeks after her father suffered a major stroke and delivered her third book to Bobbi whilst her then-roommate tried to get over a break-up by smashing holes in their apartment walls with a hammer. And, while she had to forcibly keep herself from staring at Fitz across the breakfast table or the library desks, almost physically taking her own chin in hand and directing her gaze back to the myriad documents in front of her, once engaged elsewhere she slipped easily back into research mode. On her peripheral, Fitz existed as no more than a disembodied hand passing her a note or a wraith-like presence making folders and boxes appear beside her. Deep in the archives, she existed almost solely as a ghostly observer to events of two hundred years ago. She didn’t even stop for lunch, although Fitz reminded her twice, and when the library closed and they returned to the hotel with Indian takeaway she ate without noticing, still submerged in the past and all its labyrinthine pathways. Yesterday’s clarity seemed to have deserted her sometime in the night, and she didn’t know which trail to follow.

“I’m only saying,” Fitz said from his spot at the desk, tearing off his fifth piece of naan, “your work is always about the story more than the biography. There’s no reason to be tied to the linear form. Why start at the beginning?”

She shook her head, tucking her legs underneath her to give better stability as she rifled through the notes spread around the floor for a particular question she had meant to ask him. “Ugh, but Fitz, the last thing I want is to create some nonsensical dual-timeline—”

“Readers are smart nowadays, they can follow non-linear—”

“—and don’t you think it’s better to tell a love story from the—”

“—get them invested before they realize he married her when she was thirteen—”

“—and it’s more tragic when you don’t know he’s going to—”

“—it makes more sense structurally, otherwise everything just is depressing at the end.”

“That’s true enough,” she said, shuddering at the thought of what happened to poor Marie in the wake of the French Revolution. “Though it’s also when she has her greatest triumphs. I do want to give those their proper weight.”

“Of course,” he agreed, “and that’s why I think you need to center the text on the documents themselves. They tell stories already. They’re just waiting for you to bring them to life.”

Hands full of papers—both the notes she had taken today and the sheaves of timelines and biographies and lecture outlines she had been amassing for the last six months—she charted the sea of information scattered around her and sat back on her heels, a sad and lonely island. Even at the beginning of the research process the sheer volume of information to read and digest had nearly overwhelmed her, and that was without feeling a need to hunt up every scrap of scribbled paper in dusty French archives. Fitz’s suggestion to write the book as a series of scenes inspired by selected letters or lab reports or documents, brilliant though it clearly was, would require so much more work than she had already planned. She wouldn’t even be able to _begin_ writing until she read for another six months at least, and even after that, how could she do it, do Marie-Anne and Antoine, justice? Months ago, she had told him the story was too big. She ought to have known then.

“Hey.”

She looked up and there he was, kneeling on the other side of the ocean, carefully not disarranging any of the papers. “You’re getting worried,” he said in a comical bit of understatement. “You don’t have to be.”

She huffed a laugh. “What possibly gave you the idea that I’m worried?”

“Er, your—” He reached up to touch the patch of skin between his eyebrows. “And we’ve been here before. I recognize the signs.”

Of course they had; Jemma hadn’t managed to write a book yet without feeling a fraud at least one point in the process. “But not like this, Fitz. I’ve never been so...daunted before I’ve even begun.”

“You don’t think this is beginning?” He shook his head. “ ’Course you’re daunted. You’ve never written a book about two people before—that’s double the research. And I think you...care more, maybe. Something about the Lavosiers really matters to you, so you want to be doubly sure you get it right. But”—he shrugged, almost off-handedly—“you will.”

In anything else, she would have taken him at his word; she trusted his instincts and valued his opinion over anyone else she knew. But this? Oh, she _wished_ she could believe him. “How do you know?”

Without missing a beat, he reached forward and rested the tips of his fingers against her kneecap, pressing lightly but firmly as he spoke in a tone that matched the touch: “because you’re a great writer, Jemma. No doubt in my mind about that.”

Her breath caught in her throat; her eyes caught on his gaze, as warm and steady as the feeling of his hand against her knee. She was drowning and he had thrown her a life buoy, hauling her in hand over hand with a surety she didn’t understand. “Fitz,” she said, the gravel from the morning returned, “I’m not—”

“Yeah, you are.” His fingers spread so that his whole palm lay flat against her leg. “Jemma, listen. How often do you tell me I could do better than what I do?”

“Oh, Fitz, I—”

“And you’ve hardly seen my work at all,” he pressed. “I’ve read everything you’ve written for the last eight years. I know what you can do. I _know_ you can do this.”

She swallowed, still unable to look away. “I won’t be able to do it alone.”

“Good thing you aren’t doing it alone, then.”

He smiled at her: quiet, confident, full of promise. She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move, really, or didn’t want to; as long as they stayed here, surrounded by the work and anchored to each other, everything would be all right. Carefully, she set down her papers. Gingerly, she covered his fingers with hers.

He instantly twisted them together, squeezing her cold fingers between his warm ones, and let go just as quickly, rising onto his own knees. “C’mon,” he said, “let’s pack this up for tonight. We’ll have time while we’re in New York to make sense of it; you don’t have to do it all right now.”

“Oh, but—”

“No buts.” Stooping, he picked up the carton of pathia and handed it to her. “Eat that. I’m turning on GBBO. It will look better in the morning, my mum always says.”

Since he was standing over her with his hands on his hips, she obediently ate a mouthful, then another when that one tasted incredible. Holding out his hand to help her up, he nodded firmly. “You’ll see, Jemma,” he said. “It’s going to be amazing.”

She sat on the bed and ate, directing him as he cleaned up the scraps of paper according to her careful instructions. They watched six episodes of non-stop _Bake-off_ before she turned to comment on someone’s chocolate work and found him fast asleep, head lolling against the pillow and eyelashes brushing his cheeks. Her heart turned over in her chest. _Dear_ Fitz, she thought, falling back on her grandmother’s highest compliment. She could never ask for a better collaborator or partner or— _anything_ , likely. Why would she ever diminish him to a mere handsome man? He was so much more than that.

And If her fingers were still tingling where they had been intertwined with his, it was likely just her poor circulation.

*

Fitz found himself bleary-eyed on Saturday morning, having fallen asleep in his clothes and thus not passed as restful a night as he preferred. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” he asked Jemma, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, and she shrugged.

“You looked so peaceful sleeping. It seemed a pity.”

“So you left me to toss and turn in my jeans because you wanted to look at me?” he grumbled.

To his surprise, she flushed instead of retorting. “Sorry. Another time, I’ll rouse you from a dead sleep to be sure you put on your pajamas.”

“Well, there won’t be another time, will there? I’ve got my own room in the city, and when we come back Parents’ Weekend will be over.”

“Right,” she agreed, glancing down at her knot of hands. “It won’t happen again.”

Rubbing his eyes again, he peered over his hand to see her twisting her fingers together, a sure sign he had made her uncomfortable. Guilt twinged his stomach. Unless that was just hunger. “You let me sleep in, at least. Were you not thinking we would go to the library today, or—”

“No, I don’t think so.” Her fingers stayed tangled, but her voice was nearly normal. “Since we didn’t work last night, I haven’t been able to strategize. I thought perhaps we’d want to look things over before we leave—or perhaps you needed to work. I haven’t left you very much time to be productive.”

He swung his legs over the side of the bed to avoid answering straight away. In truth he did need to spend a decent amount of time with his proofs, ensuring the information gained from his calls the day before was all appropriately collected. He really should have done that last night. But Jemma would have never rested if he had been working, and it seemed more important in the moment that he ensure she was okay rather than pound away at his publisher’s latest vanity project. He could make it up later. “ ’s alright,” he said, low in his chest, “I’ll get it done. We can go.”

“No, really,” she said, “it doesn’t make sense. We’ll have a quiet morning and then drive to New York. The reading at the Strand is at seven tonight, so we’ll need to be there by six at least, and we’ll have to eat, and we’ll want to avoid traffic if possible. We should leave here fairly soon, anyway. If that’s all right with you?”

He agreed easily—it was her trip, after all, her work—and, after a last, hearty breakfast they packed up and piled in the car, his computer in his lap and Jemma’s dress for the gala draped across the backseat. “It’s to get the wrinkles out,” she explained, and he nodded sagely even though the dress looked perfectly fine to his unpracticed eye.

“Six hours to get here,” he said. “How many do you think to get back?”

“Four,” she said primly, “that’s what the GPS says, and we’ve no reason to doubt it.”

“Five,” he said, just to make things interesting, “and whoever’s closer buys drinks Sunday night.”

“Deal.”

For the first two hours of the drive, he worked—at least, he had up the proof document and the document of his notes, and he and Jemma didn’t have conversations lasting longer than two minutes at a time. She seemed lost in her own thoughts, working through the implications of last night’s discussion about the structure of her book. Fitz encouraged her as much as he could. Her struggle was his fault, really; he hadn’t meant to throw her into such turmoil with his suggestion, but it seemed obvious to him that the straightforward way she had treated her earlier Science Heroines was all wrong for this story. He understood her concern, though. From her comments and questions as she drove, she appeared to be grappling with the prospect of more extensive research, which would equal a longer time between receiving her advance and seeing any royalties. And the rest of the Lavoisier archives were in France—far away and expensive and not someplace he could go with her. Much as he might wish to.

“But, Jemma,” he said somewhere around hour three of driving, “would you be happy writing the book without going through those archives? Would you, honestly.”

She grimaced, as he knew she would. “No.”

“No.”

“It wouldn’t feel like I was being respectful. Or ethical.”

“There you are, then.” He spread one hand in eloquent presentation.

Still keeping both hands on the wheel, she slumped in her seat for a second before returning to her upright posture. “Ugh, Fitz. Why must you be so good at telling other people how to do their jobs?”

“It’s a gift, I suppose.”

She laughed, casting a sideways glance. “Or the universe seeking equilibrium, since you’re so bad at managing your own career.”

“Hey, I am making a steady paycheck. Which is more than many people can say, including you.”

“Oh, but is a paycheck everything?” Her thumbs beat a thoughtful tattoo against the wheel. “For oneself I suppose it is, or at least a great deal. For one’s friends, though—I’d rather you had a job that made you happy than one that merely paid you.”

He shut his computer and looked out the window. Truth was, he _did_ have a job that made him happy. It just wasn’t the job he got paid for.

They reached their hotel in New York exactly four and a half hours after leaving Cornell—“we owe each other a drink,” Jemma said—and checked in, each carrying their own bags since they had separate rooms this time. Jemma’s, paid for by her publisher, faced the street. With much smaller pockets, Fitz had to head to the back of the hotel.

“I hope the room is okay,” Jemma said, the worried wrinkle back between her eyebrows. “They chose the hotel to be budget conscious; I have no idea what a budget room in a budget conscious hotel looks like.”

“It’ll be fine, Jemma. I’m only going to be sleeping in it.”

“Still.” She rolled her smaller suitcase forward and back, concentrating on its handle. “Fitz, you know you don’t have to come with me tonight. If you have to work—or, I suppose, if you want to do something else entirely. There’s no reason for you to be with me every second.”

He felt his hands go suddenly cold. With Jemma carefully avoiding his eyes, he had no way to tell what she really meant. Did she think he didn’t want to come? Did she think he wanted some time apart from her? Did _she_ want some time away from _him_? “Well,” he said carefully, tracing the ugly carpet pattern with his toe, “I’ve never been to the Strand, so I was kind of looking forward to coming. But I don’t have to be at your thing, if you’d rather I—”

“No!” She looked up quickly. “No, I’d like—if you’d like.”

“I’d like.”

“All right then.” She took a deep breath, relief clear in her eyes. “Let’s meet at five to eat. We’ll get a cab to the bookstore.”

“Okay,” he said, feeling the same relief fill his chest. “See you then.”

 

*

 

He had enough time to iron his slacks before it was time to meet Jemma, but he was glad he had done so when he saw her nice trousers and crisp, patterned blouse. It was all he could do not to let his eyes track over her from crown to heel. “Do I look alright?” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear, “I’m not sure about dress code for this sort of thing.”

“You look”—he had to clear his throat—“you look nice. Too nice for burgers, which is what I was thinking for dinner.”

“Burgers would be a dream,” she said fervently. “I would very much like to stuff my face with chips before having to speak about my work in front of a sophisticated New York audience.”

“That we can do.”

They downed huge burgers and thick-cut fries at a bar that wanted to be a pub, then walked the two blocks to the bookstore in a futile attempt to not feel as full.

“Are you nervous?” he asked.

“A bit.” Her shoulder bumped against his as they walked; he fought off a desire to grab her hand to keep from losing her in the flow of people. “I’m excited to talk to people about Sophie, and I’ve done readings before. Only—well, it’s the _Strand_ , Fitz. I’ve never read to an audience like this.”

“They’re just people. And they had to buy your book to get in, yeah? So they’re already inclined to like you.”

“I suppose.”

She didn’t sound convinced, but a row of impatient taxis stuck at a stoplight precluded his response, and then they were at the bookstore meeting Jemma’s publicist and the event organizer and other people he didn’t catch the names of, and he didn’t get a chance to talk to her again until they were standing to the side of the stage listening to her introduction. In the chairs below, sixty people sat rapt, clutching copies of _Aminus Invictus_ and looking, he had to admit, very sophisticated indeed. Jemma’s hands rested in white balls at her sides, and if he timed her breaths he would bet each inhale and exhale would be four seconds exactly. He leaned forward just enough to bring his mouth near her ear.

“Hey.”

She kept staring at the speaker, but inclined her head to let him know she was listening.

“You’ve read to me a hundred times. Just read to me.”

At first he wasn’t sure she heard him; she didn’t turn, she didn’t nod, she didn’t even stop her deliberate, even breathing. Then, in a flash, her hand came out to engulf his, cold fingers sending warm sparks up his arm straight to his heart just as they had last night. “Fitz,” she said, “you are—”

But before she could finish the sentence the Strand organizer drew her introduction to a close, beginning the applause that was meant to carry Jemma to the stage. Taking a deep breath, she squeezed his hand and stepped up, turning to the audience with her most brilliant smile.

“Hello, I’m so pleased to be with you tonight. Thank you for having me. I’m going to read a bit from chapter thirteen of the book, and then I think we’ll have some question and answers for a bit. Shall I begin?”

She opened the book to the selection they chose on the drive to Cornell and began reading, quietly at first, seeking him out after every sentence, but growing in confidence as the selection continued. From his spot with the event staff at the back of the room, Fitz watched how the crowd leaned into it, some following along in their copies and some just enjoying being read to. He was definitely one of the latter. Jemma read aloud well, but better was the clear pleasure she got from sharing Sophia Brahe’s story with the people in front of her. When she came to the end and opened the Q&A the audience responded enthusiastically. Jemma could hardly answer fast enough.

Near the end of the time, someone asked if she was working on her next book. Jemma nodded, leaning forward eagerly. “I’m glad you asked that, because my publisher told me especially to mention it. Yes, I am; I’ve actually been up in Cornell this week doing some extensive research.”

“Who’s it about?” someone called.

“It’s rather different than my previous work.” Jemma caught his eye over the crowd. He nodded, trying to send encouragement. It must have worked, because she returned to the audience and went on assuredly. “I’m writing about Marie and Antoine Lavoisier. They were a husband and wife who lived in France before the Revolution. Antoine was a chemist—he’s actually called the Father of Modern Chemistry—and Marie helped him in all his work. She was a lab assistant; she made drawings and engravings for his books; she learned English so she could translate works that hadn’t yet been translated into French. After he was guillotined she petitioned the government to let her have all his work, and then she published it in his stead.” The audience murmured. Jemma’s smile faltered, but she kept going. “They were an amazing team and I’m very much enjoying getting to know them.”

Fitz hadn’t noticed the event organizer heading for the stage, but she appeared next to Jemma with an air of calm efficiency. “And I’m sure we’ll all enjoy them as well. Why have you chosen to write about them?”

Jemma clasped her hands together over her knee. “I’ve been thinking a good deal, lately, about collaboration. So often we think about geniuses as though they do everything on their own, but that’s not accurate to real life. I would never call myself a genius”—the audience laughed—“but even in my own work, there are dozens, scores of people who help me tell my stories. As you’ll know if you read my acknowledgements.”

Her attention didn’t leave the organizer, but Fitz could feel her sending him an invisible wink. Was that the right answer? He wondered. It didn’t fully explain her passion for the project yet, but it was getting closer. The organizer made a noise of agreement, then looked out over the audience. “Let’s see, we have time for one more question, I think? What about this young lady near the front?”

A girl Fitz had noticed earlier—probably in her late teens, with thick glasses and a long plait—stood and tugged at the end of her hair. “Yes, hi. I’ve read all your books a bunch of times and I really admire you.”

“Well, thank you.” Jemma’s eyebrows shot up. “Goodness, how lovely.”

How deserved, Fitz thought, and the girl nodded like it was obvious. “I just wanted to ask, you said you don’t really read other languages very well?”

“That’s true,” Jemma said, “fortunately, I have a brilliant collaborator who does all my translation work for me.”

“Yeah,” the girl continued, “I just wanted to ask, how did you find them? I’m really interested in European history, but I’m really bad at learning languages and I need some help.”

“Oh, I see. I wish I could help you, but it was almost an accident. When I was working on my book about Dorothea Klumpke-Roberts I needed to be able to read her work in French and I was finding it very difficult. My editor, Bobbi, who is a gorgeous human being, mentioned that her husband at the time—he’s still her husband, actually—had a friend who was brilliant at languages and suggested I contact him. So I did, _very_ tentatively”—she laughed—“and he responded, and then we just...never stopped.”

 Her smile flew back across the crowd, just for him, and lodged somewhere in his chest. He remembered that first email, every sentence bounded by an apology and their middles suggesting something that was at least different than the endless parade of B&Bs and vineyards. About two village festivals away from chucking his job entirely, he had leapt at anything that offered a chance at sanity. And then, as she said, they just never stopped. Emails grew to phone calls, to Skype and FaceTime, to here: a week straight with her, helping her research, helping her plan, getting to talk to her and listen to her and watch her glow in the glory of her well-deserved praise. As she came off the stage and moved to the table to sign books, he found he couldn’t look away. She was so—so—

“She’s amazing.”

He looked to his left, where one of the event staff had come up to stand next to him. “She is,” he agreed, feeling the word didn’t quite explain the balloon in his chest when he looked at her, but not sure what would be better.

“You must be very proud.”

Proud? He considered. He didn’t have a lot to do with her work, but he was proud of the little he did, and he was proud to work with her. “Yeah, I guess.”

“You came with her, right?” He nodded, about to explain, but the staffer went on without pause. “How long have you been together?”

“Oh, we’re not—not—” He couldn’t make the words come, as tongue-tied as he had been when Jemma suggested sharing a room. Why would—did he look like—did _she_? Or was it just people’s bad assumptions? Or—

“Oh! Oh, I’m sorry. I just thought—you looked like—never mind. Sorry.”

He vaguely felt the staffer slink away, but didn’t see it. It was like his vision had collapsed, like his peripherals had disappeared and all that was left was Jemma Simmons, her smile and her eyes and her freckles that showed up when her make-up smudged at the end of the day, and her keen mind and boundless enthusiasm and how much she loved her work, and how much she wanted him to live the best life he could. And maybe it _could_ be better, he thought in a burst of light, but it wouldn’t be better than it was right this moment, just because he was with her.

“We, aren’t like that,” he said aloud to no one, unable to look away from her, her, her. “We just work together.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buckle up, buckos, this one's a beast.

High from the success of the Strand event, Jemma flew through Sunday’s early-morning radio interviews without a hint of nerves. The hosts were all professionals, practiced in making their guests sound comfortable and appealing, and if they hadn’t read her book they were at least excellent at pretending to be interested in it. Even the knowledge that her voice would reach people all over, not only the city but the country, didn’t faze her.

“It’s just a conversation,” a bleary-eyed Fitz told her over FaceTime when he rung to wish her good luck on the way to her first interview. “You and the host, talking about Sophie. You’ve got it sewn up.”

“And the audience,” she reminded him, twirling a strand of hair around her finger.

He snorted. “Yeah, but who’s listening at this hour? They’re still asleep on the West Coast. Some people might not have gone to _bed_ yet, in Hawaii.”

“You don’t think people will be listening?”

“Can’t speak for people.” He tried and failed to stifle a yawn; she tried and mostly succeeded avoiding thinking he was adorable when waking up. “I’ll be listening.”

A glance out the window showed nothing her reflection and the bright city lights still in full glow; the sun wasn’t due to rise for another hour at least. Imagining late-bird Fitz setting an alarm and rousing himself from a deep sleep just to call warmed her to the tips of her fingers. “You don’t have to wait up for them, Fitz. I’m sure you want to go back to sleep. It’s so early, and you’ve already called to wish me luck.”

As if to prove her wrong, he struggled to sit further up in bed. “What else was I gonna do?”

Though she had tried to convince him to flick out the light and get a few more hours in before starting his work for the day, the texts she received after each of her interviews let her know he hadn’t listened to her sage advice. _Killed that one_ , he wrote, or _if I didn’t already have a copy, I’d buy the book_. She grinned over each of them in the cab back to the hotel. Even if he didn’t mean them, they served the purpose he intended—but she had no doubt he meant them. For all his natural Scottish grumpiness, he was unfailingly encouraging about her work. Riding the lift to their floor, she pondered whether _genius research partner_ was strong enough to use as his identifier in the acknowledgements; perhaps, but only if she wrote a full paragraph extolling his other virtues. “As always,” she said aloud to the empty lift, “my deepest thanks are due to my genius research partner, without whom—as I’ve said before but never so truly—this book would not exist. In addition to his obvious talents in translation, he is a marvellous person. I am beyond grateful for his—” The lift doors opened. Making her way down the corridor to his room, she tried to decide which of Fitz’s many sterling qualities to mention first: His unwavering support? His ability to see what ought to be done and his courage to tell her to do it? His unselfishness to use his holiday as a favour to her, even with his own work to be done? Or perhaps something that would only reveal itself over the rest of the writing process? Because if she had learned anything on this trip—and she had learned many, many things—it was that she still had fathoms of Fitz to explore.

He opened the door at her knock with a distracted look in his eyes and a pen in his mouth—had he always had such a habit of eating his writing utensils, Jemma wondered as she resolutely ignored the memory of Friday morning, or was this something new? “Good morning,” she said, directing her gaze to his eyes, “are you about ready to go to brunch, or—”

“Oh.” He popped the pen from his mouth, glancing first at his watch and then his socked feet. “I lost track of the time, I was...no, not ready, but come in and give me a second.” Stepping back, he gestured her forward with a sweet imitation of a tailcoat-ed butler. “We don’t have to go straight away?”

“Well, pretty close, but you’ve got enough time to put your shoes on.”

He closed the door and bent to pick up his shoes. “You should have just gone straight there and texted me the address. That way we would have been sure not to lose the table.”

“I didn’t even think of it,” she said, truthfully. And if she had thought of it, she probably wouldn’t have done it anyway. Practical though it might have been, it also meant less time in Fitz’s company, and that was intolerable. They only had four more days, now. Three and a half, really. She didn’t want to waste any time.

The smell of shampoo and fabric softener made her light-headed as he brushed past, shoes in hand. Sitting on the end of the bed, he leaned over to begin unlacing, then glanced up at her. “Hang on, this brunch place—you said it was classy?”

“Very classy.” A quick recall of the price list brought a wave of doubt. “That’s all right, isn’t it? I thought we deserved someplace nice, just once.”

“After skipping lunch for a week we owe it to ourselves. But I was actually thinking about clothes.”

“Oh.” She surveyed his dress shirt and cardigan and admired, again, the slacks he had worn to the event last night. Fitz looked nice whatever he wore, but those trousers were _particularly_ handsome. “I’m wearing this,” she said, gesturing to her blouse and blazer and trousers. “If we’re wrong, we’ll be wrong together, I suppose.”

“Just don’t want to look like some slob next to you.”

He concentrated on his laces, and she concentrated on not staring at the way his shirt stretched over his shoulders and the long line of his back. _Honestly, Jemma_. Instead, she looked around the room, cataloguing the ways it differed from hers: Smaller area, obviously. Fewer pictures, discoloured lampshades. The bed looked as comfortable, at least, though Fitz hadn’t made his and the pillows rested, one atop the other, in the centre of the mattress—did that mean he preferred to sleep in the middle? Had he felt terribly cramped with her last week? She wouldn’t have minded if he hadn’t kept quite so strictly to his own side... No. Moving on. His closet was smaller than hers, which was probably all right since he didn’t have as many clothes to worry about, garment bag—no doubt holding his suit for the gala this evening—aside. And on the desk, an open packet of crisps sat next to an equally open, though less greasy, computer.

“Oh,” she said, pleased, “Were you able to do work?”

Laces tied, he stood and patted his pockets. “I was trying to track down that guy in Oberammergau, but didn’t have much success. I was a bit, er...”

“Tired, oh dear! You didn’t have to listen, Fitz.”

“Yeah, I did. I wasn’t tired, I was—” He stopped, shook his head, and began again, one hand on the back of his neck. She wondered what he was trying to avoid facing, ducking her head in her turn. “My brain’s a little busy right now. I missed you—your tea, this morning.”

She had to take a breath before she could answer. A misspeak, surely a misspeak, but one that rang true. She had missed him this morning, too. In the dark haze of the four o’clock hour she had filled both thermoses before realizing she only needed one. But she could never say so; he hadn’t meant it, and even if he had she would only embarrass them both. It did seem a bit _much_ for two people who had barely met. “Yes, I wouldn’t recommend this swill,” she said instead, trying to approximate a light tone. “It was just as terrible at the stations. Honestly, I know Americans think ignoring tea is a measure of their freedom, but must they go so far as to punish people who care to drink it?”

“ _Lipton_.” Fitz shuddered as though he had said _sea slug._ “Worse than Tetley, honestly.”

“I always say it’s Yorkshire or nothing.”

“I will accept PG Tips.”

“Or, if one feels very posh—”

“Twinings.”

“Exactly.”

The conversation came to a natural resting place, soft and comfortable between them, the kind of end that leaves the air humming contentedly. Strange, Jemma thought, they had only agreed on a point they had no doubt discussed before and didn’t matter anyway. There was no reason to feel the agreement was just one strand of a shining golden rope that swung between them as they stared at each other over the stretch of carpet, filling her chest with that familiar warmth that was quickly coming to mean _Fitz_ and his eyes with that look she loved even more than his smile. None of this was new.

But somehow, it seemed like it was.

* * *

 

When she made reservations at Balthazar in the summer, she had only thought the brunch menu provided a nice mix of savoury and sweet, breakfast and lunch, and Fitz would probably enjoy the _pain au chocolat_ and be amused by the monkey bread. As, of course, he did and was. But, having made the reservations in the summer, she had no way of knowing that the eggs muerette and caramelized banana tartine would be far from the most memorable part of the experience. Aside from a vague impression of bacon-flavored, wine-soaked mushroom, all Jemma remembered was a glass-and-brass honeycomb and Fitz. The golden feeling from the hotel hadn’t left, only spread out like perfectly poached egg yolk; though they talked the same way they always had, everything seemed thicker, richer, better. Catching glimpses in the mirrors scattered around the restaurant, she wondered if the light was particularly flattering or if she could possibly actually look as happy as she felt.

“So what next?” Fitz asked, once the bill had come and gone away again in its soft black folder.

“Next?”

He took a final sip of his elaborate but tasty tea. “An afternoon loose in New York City? I know you planned more than one activity for today. Are we going to the library? To Central Park? Tea at the Plaza?”

“Oh, I couldn’t eat anything for a day, could you?”

“Always,” he said soberly. And, she had no doubt, truthfully.

“The thing of it is,” she said, “we haven’t so _very_ much time before we need to dress for the gala—”

“How long does it take you?”

“I’ve rather more hair than you have, Fitz—and there’s one thing I wanted very much to do while I was here. It seemed appropriate for this trip.”

He made a show of thinking as he stood, taking his jacket from the back of the chair. “Are we going to a museum of science?”

“A museum,” she said, rising as well, “but not of science.”

They rode the half-hour uptown to the Met Fifth Avenue, diligently standing in line to pay their $25 admission. Fitz grumbled a little, craning his neck to look around the grand marble atrium. “Not that this isn’t nice, but I don’t go to art museums even when they’re free.”

“I know.”

“Nor do you, might I add.”

She gasped, a bit stung. “Pardon me, I’ve been to the National Gallery at least twice.”

“Of all the things,” he continued without pause, “of the hundred million things there are to do here, why have you _most_ wanted to come to an over-priced, over-sized art museum?”

“You’ll see, Fitz. Just trust me.”

Tickets safely stowed in her purse, she consulted the map to find the room she had already identified from the museum website, then led them up the great stairs to the European galleries on the second floor. Turning left, they travelled through Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands before reaching eighteenth-century France and, with it, the revolutionary works of Jacques-Louis David. Catching sight of the identifying name on the doorway of Gallery 631, Fitz stopped and raised both eyebrows. “Jemma. Did we pay fifty dollars to see the work of a man you have on more than one occasion called, and I quote: ‘an opportunistic, unprincipled propagandist’?”

“Technically, yes,” she said, finding the painting she sought and tugging him through the crowds towards it, “but in spirit, certainly not. And anyway you can’t deny that he _can_ paint; he just has no artistic integrity. No, Fitz, look around and tell me what we’ve come to see.”

He glanced curiously from side to side, sticking for a second on the famous _Death of Socrates_ , before looking through the doorway on the right and sucking in a slow breath. He didn’t speak again until they both stood before it: David’s great double portrait, [_Antoine Laurent Lavoisier and His Wife_](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436106).

Really, Jemma thought, the painting was ridiculously titled. Certainly, Antoine was there; obviously, his instruments and work were on clear display. But neither he nor David was very interested in anything except Marie, whose direct gaze met her viewers from the exact middle of the painting. Everything directed one’s attention to her: the light, the lines, the space, and most of all the fact that the great Lavoisier himself abandoned his work when his wife leaned over his shoulder, looking up at her as though she was the best discovery he had ever made. And she was, of course. Their marriage, born from a favour to her father, blossomed his career and solidified his legacy. Without Marie, what would Antoine have been?

Beside her, Fitz spoke in a hushed tone. “Well, I don’t know that it was worth fifty dollars, but”—she bristled, preparing to ream him, and he made a _wait_ gesture with his eyebrows—“ _but_ I can see why you wanted to come. This is like meeting them, almost.”

Indignation dissipated, she relaxed back into contemplation, nodding her agreement. “Doesn’t this look so immediate? Like she’s just come in from somewhere to see what he’s writing. Perhaps he didn’t expect her until she put her hand on his shoulder. Perhaps he knew she was there and had a question—perhaps he still does, and he’s just waiting for her to answer. Perhaps...” She didn’t finish her sentence, having started one that could only end in embarrassing sentimentality. Clearly working, Antoine likely needed an answer about something concrete like, oh, clarification on a translation. No respected historian could voice _perhaps she is his answer_ aloud. Even to the person she trusted most in the world.

She looked over her shoulder, slightly red, to apologise for her flight of fancy, only to find Fitz _there_. Lost in the painting, she hadn’t noticed several tour groups entering the room; he must have moved closer to leave more space for the crowds behind them. Not quite touching her, he radiated body heat and the clean smell and something else that made her feel electrified, and her apology—along with anything else she might have said—vanished. Instead, her brain occupied itself with cataloguing every single thing about him she had never noticed before this week: the crisp line between his hair and his neck, a sharp division between what she could only imagine would be two maddeningly soft textures; the shell-shape of his ear, none the worse for the way he tugged on it when he felt awkward; the coppery-gold of his beard that gave way to brown the closer it came to his jawbone; the line of his nose with its little divot at the tip; the dark circles spilling onto his cheeks, not just shadows from his unfairly long eyelashes; his eyes.

Oh, his eyes.

They met hers and didn’t falter, even though she was suddenly, dimly aware of his open coat brushing her back as he breathed. How many times had she looked at Fitz? she wondered hazily. Over the course of their partnership it must have been millions. Hundred of millions. She knew his face by heart—amused, bemused, cross, petulant, murderous, focused, playful—everything a person might be, Fitz had been with her in the last eight years. Or had he? Because her heart was beating furiously in her chest and his gaze was like a key in a lock to a door she had never seen before, and if she turned even the slightest bit it would be so easy to cup his cheek in one hand and—

He took a big step to the side, putting several inches between them, and looked back at the painting. The triangle his arms made when he placed his hands at the small of his back kept her sharply away. “You can really—it’s obvi—David certainly knew who the important one was, didn’t he?”

The Lavoisiers, of course. The reason they were here. The reason they were together at all, actually—however much this felt like something else, it was a business trip. She swallowed hard, trying to tamp down a lump that tasted sharply of regret. “The part of me that doubts David’s motives suggests he might have been flattering an influential woman, but after all my research, I fully believe Antoine would have wanted to be remembered this way.”

“Too bad Marie had to go petition the Jacobins and publish his work, then.”

A joke, but she couldn’t laugh yet; trying would tear the fragile membrane keeping her chest together. Everything in her yearned to reach out for him, but she managed to ball her hands and keep them steady at her sides. “She wanted the world to remember him, he wanted the world to remember her. One of them had to be disappointed, I suppose.”

“Maybe.” Not looking away from the painting, Fitz took a step back and canted his head. “Still, she’s here. We haven’t forgotten her. And when you write the book, no one will be able to think of him without thinking of her.”

“When we write the book, you mean.”

Staring fixedly at the tablecloth by Antoine’s foot, he didn’t seem to hear her. “But like you said, Antoine won’t mind. When you lo—when you work—someone so amazing, all you want is for them to get everything they deserve, you know?”

“Yes,” she said, decidedly not meeting Marie’s significant look, “I know.”

* * *

After spending a decent amount of time with Marie and Antoine, Fitz and Jemma made a quick round through a few more galleries, “just to get our money’s worth,” he said, and she agreed without seeming to be bothered one way or the other. Whatever she was thinking about—and she was thinking hard about something, Fitz could tell—it clearly didn’t have anything to do with European artwork. He, on the other hand, concentrated as hard as he could on the variety of informational plaques and eavesdropped furiously on any tours that entered his general vicinity. Anything to _not_ think about his near miss with Jemma. All morning he had been _so careful_ not to let last night’s revelation affect their interactions; he had religiously kept to his own space, kept conversation in well-worn paths, kept himself from blurting out any of the million variations of _I think I might already be in love with you_ that had been playing round-and-round-the-mulberry-bush in his head since they got back from the Strand. But one accidental whiff of her shampoo and the perfume he knew she put on to give herself courage that morning and he all but accosted her. Good thing he had managed to rein himself in, or who knows what might have happened. Even then, it had been all he could do to camouflage his feelings with Antoine’s. He hoped she bought it. He worried she did not.

Though he could, more or less, hide the wrinkles on his forehead, he had no way to hide the wrinkles on his suit, so when they returned to the hotel he borrowed a steamer from the concierge. Jemma roused herself enough to show concern. “Are you sure you don’t need help, Fitz?” she asked, eying the steamer sceptically. “I’m happy to give it a go.”

“Please, Jemma, I’m not completely helpless.” He gave the sort of indignant huff he thought he would have given before the thought of sharing ironing duties set off a chain of domestic daydreams. “I can manage my own trousers.”

Too late, he heard how that sounded. Jemma blinked rapidly before responding a bit too nonchalantly to be believed. “Of course you can, I didn’t think anything else. Oh, well, I’ll see you in an hour, then. Come to my room if I haven’t come to yours by half past six.”

And she flounced out of the elevator, not even waiting for him to wrangle the standing steamer out of the lift and down the hall. Not that he could blame her.

As he steamed, Fitz considered the problems littering the evening ahead. First, he was going to have to wear his suit amidst the hoi polloi of Shield Publishing and not feel horribly inferior—a lifelong struggle he had a great deal of practice in. Second, the boredom of carrying on the exact same conversation with a hundred people he had never seen before and would never see again. Third, keeping his occupation—or at least his employers—a secret; it would be very bad if they found out he had entered a competitor’s belly. Fourth, making sure Hunter didn’t spill anything embarrassing. Fifth, not spilling anything on himself, which would be beyond embarrassing. Sixth, spending the whole night with Jemma.

Never in a million years would he have thought ‘spending a whole night with Jemma’ would be a problem, but recent events proved otherwise. If he had never met her in person— never watched her face light up over dusty documents, never heard her polite swearing at idiots on the road, never smelled a little like her when he woke up in the morning—maybe they could have continued as they had been before. Wishing they could be friends was infinitely more bearable than wishing they could be more than that. And now, knowing what he felt—had always felt, if he was perfectly honest with himself—he was going to have to spend a whole evening glued to her side, watching her outshine her peers by the sheer fact of who she was, _and_ she was going to be wearing a gorgeous dress. Not that she wasn’t beautiful all the time, but still. He was a goner.

Once pressed and dressed, he wandered helplessly around the room, watching the clock tick closer and closer to six-thirty. The steaming hadn’t taken as long as he thought, and he had plenty of time to stew. Theoretically, he could have done some work. He still had plenty left; he hadn’t been as productive as he should last week, the work time he had counted on this morning vanished somewhere between his late-night and late-morning romantic crises. Said crises continuing, trying to work seemed pointless. Instead, he shined his shoes with a flannel, spent ten minutes practising buttoning his jacket with one hand, and texted his friend Mack—the most suave man he knew—for advice on canapés.

 _One bite_ , Mack said, _they should be small enough for that. And keep one hand free so you can hold her plate if she needs you to. This is rookie stuff, Turbo._

_Pardon me if I’ve never taken a beautiful woman to a gala before and don’t know the etiquette. We can’t all have wives that head up major non-profits._

_She’s a beautiful woman?_ The typing dots appeared. _Elena says to tell you_ ¡Sabía que ella tenía que ser hermosa! Envíanos una foto o no te darás cuenta cuando robe tu teléfono. _I guess you know what that means._

Ignoring Elena’s long-distance assessment of Jemma’s appearance, he typed quickly, aware it was nearly six-thirty and Jemma would be knocking at any moment. _Yes, I’ll get someone to take a picture. But I’m blaming you._

_If there’s dancing, I want video._

Fitz stared at his phone in utter horror. Dancing? He had never guessed there might be _dancing._ The only kind he knew how to do was the beat-thumping, no-one-looking kind, which would obviously be out of place in an event of this nature. Could a quick Google search give him enough to get by? He had to try. Ten minutes later, he realized the project was hopeless at the exact same time he realized Jemma was late—and, by extension, so was he. Patting his pockets to make sure he had all his essentials, he hurried from the room and down the corridor to knock forcefully on Jemma’s door. Ten minutes late! Was she even alive? When she opened the door a minute later, he was so relieved that instead of any of the friendly compliments he had been practicing, he just burst out the first thing that came into his head:

“Wow. You look stunning.”

She looked down at her dark pink sleeveless dress, tucking a strand of silky hair behind her ear. “Oh, I’ve had this forever. Paid a great more than I should have for it at uni; I have to make sure it depreciates in value well.”

Even if she only wore it once, Fitz thought it would have been worth whatever she paid, but he was able to keep that in. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, “I suddenly got panicked that there might be dancing tonight. There won’t be dancing, will there?”

She looked equally horrified. “Oh, I hope not. It’s never as glamorous as it looks in films. Anyway, I’m not wearing the right shoes.” He followed her gaze down the milk-bottle beauty of her legs to find a pair of black, studded, wickedly pointed high heels and had to close his mouth quickly. “They’re terribly uncomfortable,” she said, returning the wayward hair to its place, “I can scarcely walk in them. If there’s dancing, we’ll have to beg off.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Glad to be of assistance.”

Although he was very intentionally not looking at her mouth, he couldn’t help but notice her quick bite of her lower lip, a sure sign she had something possibly controversial to say. He raised an eyebrow and waited.

“It’s just,” she said, “you look very nice. Too. Your suit is very smart.”

“Oh, this old thing?” he said, just as though he hadn’t spent a whole trying on every suit in the store, just as though he couldn’t feel the heat rushing up the back of his neck. She thought he looked _nice_. “Not very exciting, men’s clothes. They’re all pretty much the same.”

Her eyes darted to something over his shoulder, glanced down at her clasped hands, settled somewhere in the vicinity of the half-Windsor knot at his throat. “Not at all. Men’s formalwear is having much more fun than it has in recent years; haven’t you seen the brocade—”

“Jemma, not that I’m not interested”—he was not particularly—“only, it’s already quarter ‘til, and I know you hate—”

She stopped short, both hands coming up to her throat. “Oh! We’re late!” She took a step forwards, very wobbly indeed, then said “oh!” again and turned sharply on her heel with a flare of her skirt. “Oh, one moment, I can’t forget my bag.”

The shiny tiny thing she returned with hardly seemed worthy of the name ‘bag’, but he held it for her obediently while she put on her coat and closed the door behind her. Handing it back, he looked down again at her ridiculous shoes. The thick pile of carpet, the stairs in the lobby, the bustle of the street—Jemma could do anything, he had every confidence, but if he could make it easier for her, didn’t he have a responsibility to do so? As a friend? Screwing his courage to the sticking point, he extended his arm the way men did in the period dramas his mum liked. “Um, shall we, then?”

For a second, he had a panicked idea that he had finally succeeded in making things too weird; she stared at his arm as though she didn’t recognize it. Then, just as he was about to drop it with whatever bad joke made its way to the surface, she reached out her hand and tucked it firmly into the crook of his elbow. “Thank goodness I’ve got you here to hold onto. Imagine trying to do any of this by myself!”

“You could,” he said.

She pressed her lips together. “Perhaps. But I don’t know if I would want to.”

Between keeping Jemma physically steady and himself emotionally steady, Fitz didn’t know which was more difficult. Admittedly, one issue compounded the other; it was kind of hard to remember that he and Jemma were, at best, friends when she was clutching his arm like she would go spinning into space without him. And then, at the base of the short flight of stairs in the lobby, something happened and she suddenly swayed into his side, bringing her other hand up to meet the first one. He halted, concerned.

“Sorry,” she said, biting her lip, “the tile’s a bit slippery and my shoe didn’t land correctly.”

“ ’s all right,” he managed to choke out, “it’s what I’m here for.”

But she didn’t loosen her grip until they got into the cab—“another splurge,” Jemma had said on the drive down yesterday, but Fitz thanked anyone listening that they had agreed to avoid the subway. In the dark, semi-public space of the backseat, Jemma kept up a light patter, giving Fitz the lowdown on the few people she expected to connect with and wondering idly about what they’d be given to eat. He listened with more attention than the subjects deserved. His list of problems kept trying to demand he attend to their new reordering (one: spend a whole evening with Jemma without being an utter tosser, two: keep Hunter from being embarrassing about Jemma) but he had no doubt that way lay madness. The only way he could possibly survive would be to pretend nothing had changed between meeting her at the airport and now. _We work together_ , he repeated to himself, only to realize he could hardly say that without putting his job at risk. _We’re friends_ , he tried instead, not sure if that was right either.  _We’re_...what?

Before he could settle on a satisfactory answer, the cab pulled up to the Beekman, the Victorian-era hotel Shield had chosen to host its gala. Jemma ducked her head to be able to see through his window, the one closer to the building. “Oh, Fitz,” she breathed, “it’s so lovely. Like something from home.”

“And this is an old building here,” he huffed, pulling out his card to pay the driver. “At home it would be brand-new.”

“Oh, no.” She raised her voice so he could hear her as he clambered out of the car. “It’s before the War, so it’s at least nicely settled. It’s been redone recently inside and the pictures are gorgeous. I wonder which of the spaces we’ll be in?”

“All that research and you didn’t figure out what we’ll be eating?”

Following after him, she straightened unsteadily and accepted his arm again, almost as though she expected it. “Event menus are chosen in consultation with head chef Tom Colicchio, so there.”

They made their way inside, pausing to appropriately admire the lobby’s nine-storey atrium and the Persian rugs covering marble floors before retrieving their table assignments, drink tickets, and directions. “No dancing, then,” Jemma noted when they made their way to the first floor and found the room filled to bursting with elegantly set tables.

“Thank God,” he agreed, “but where’s the bar?”

“Oh, honestly, Fitz, it’s not that bad yet—”

“No, it’s not for me. If I find the bar I’ll find—”

“MATE!”

He wasn’t the only person who turned to find the source of the uncouth call, but he was the only one prepared for what he saw: a short man without a tie and a beer in hand, shouldering his way through the crowd. Fitz had enough presence of mind to detach Jemma’s hand from his arm before Hunter got close enough to comment. Just standing, she would be all right—plus, he knew what was about to happen.

Sure enough, Hunter threw both arms around Fitz’s neck as soon as he could, thumping him heartily on the back. “Finally, someone at these rotten dos worth talking to. I’ve never been so glad to see a Scot in all my life.”

“Isn’t your wife here?” Fitz said, thumping equally as heartily. Mates were mates, after all.

“Yeah, but this is business for her. Have to be on my best behaviour.” Letting go of the embrace, Hunter held him out at arms length with both hands on his shoulders. “Let me look at you. You clean up nice! No one who had seen you after Six Nations would have guessed it.”

“There’s just a small bit of difference between rugger and a gala.”

“But is there,” Hunter said sagely, taking a swig of his beer. “Give it a couple hours. Last one, the head of print layout came at the person who handles clearing illustrations with one of the centrepieces. Bob had a good black eye for a week afterwards.”

“No, really?” Jemma said, eyes wide.

Hunter dropped his other arm from Fitz’s shoulder, turning to give her the once-over with his interest clearly piqued. Horribly and suddenly sure he should have warned Jemma that Hunter was nowhere near as much of a ladies’ man as he liked to pretend, Fitz fought the urge to shut his eyes.

“And you must be Jemma Simmons.”

“And you must be Hunter,” she said, meeting his suggestive tone with a smile that showed sharp teeth.

Hunter remained unconcerned. “The one and only, love. Bob’s schmoozing somewhere, but I know she’s looking forwards to meeting you in person. She’s got a few people for you to speak to. Just, you know, find the high ground and you’ll be able to see her head.”

“The ground’s not all the same level?” Fitz asked, glancing down worriedly. If the carpet was uneven he was going to have a time and a half keeping Jemma from rolling an ankle.

Jemma touched his arm lightly. “I think it’s metaphorical.”

Her fingers only barely brushed his sleeve, but Hunter’s sharp eyes caught it and lit up. Fitz held in his groan. “Or,” Hunter said, “I think we’re sitting at the same table. That might be the best use of our time—that way I can give you the unvarnished truth about everyone before they trick you with their practiced charm.”

“Oh, I don’t think—” Jemma began.

“Now that guy there”—Hunter took another drink from his bottle and used the bottom to point surreptitiously at a man standing a little distance from their clump. Fitz and Jemma leaned to the side to better see—“don’t get caught in a conversation with him if you can possibly help it. Not only does he not let you get a word in edgewise, he talks your ear off with medical horror stories.”

“Ugh,” Fitz said.

“ _And_ ,” Hunter added, looking gleeful, “they aren’t even his. He knicks them off the Internet and pretends they happened to him.”

Both Jemma and Fitz gasped in horror. Hunter, pleased to have such a good audience, directed their attention over his right shoulder. “And that one there—”

Hunter regaled them with filthy yet fascinating gossip—which was, Fitz knew from long experience, his specialty—until Bobbi appeared from nowhere, tall and blonde and dangerously glaring at her boisterous husband. “Are you seriously doing exactly what I told you not to do?”

“Jemma’s got to be forewarned,” Hunter protested. “Plus, of the things you told me not to do, I thought sharing office secrets was less risky than taking the mick out of Fitz about Scotland’s loss to _Israel_ a few weeks ago.”

As often happened when talking football with Hunter, Fitz’s blood rushed to his head and swelled his tongue with hot, indignant words. “Oh, well, if we’re going to go there—”

“We are not,” Bobbi said firmly, “or if we are, I am going to pretend I don’t know you when you are inevitably asked to leave. Fitz, please be the bigger man here.”

Football-induced rage took a minute to clear, but all Fitz needed was a glance at Jemma to blow everything else away. Her co-workers, her night—he was an accessory, like her sparkling handbag, and needed to be equally as irreproachable. He shrugged his shoulders easily. “I’m planning on staying until dessert, at least. I hear the menu’s been specially chosen in consultation with the head chef.”

Bobbi’s eyebrows rose. “The food should be pretty good, it’s true. It’s to make up for the speeches.”

“Necessary,” Hunter agreed. “That’s why the bar is always decent, too. Speaking of, you haven’t got drinks yet—Fitz, should we go get some? Let Bobbi and Jemma do the”—his hand made a loose circle around the room—“thing?”

“Sure,” he said, then turned to Jemma. “If that’s okay?”

“Of course. Could you bring me—”

“A g&t?”

Anyone could see her smile, but something in it reminded him of watching GBBO in the warm lamplight. “Exactly.”

He nodded, fighting the impulse to stuff his hands in his pockets, and followed Hunter towards the back of the room. The queue for the bar was long enough to require a corner, so they took their place and settled in for a good gab. Both their gender and their nationality stereotypically suggested silence, but neither Fitz nor Hunter had much stock in stereotypes. After covering Hunter’s work testing security systems (theoretically interesting and practically dull), Fitz’s (a good whinge that still somehow didn’t have the same vehemence as normal), the ridiculous housing prices in New York and Chicago respectively, the _Strictly_ season, and where Hunter’s marriage was on the scale of _bliss_ to _divorce_ (currently, _time to take a holiday from each other_ ), Hunter turned to Fitz with a wolfish gleam in his eye. Knowing what that meant, Fitz peered down the queue to calculate how long he would have to equivocate before they got their drinks. Too long. He resigned himself to spilling everything.

“So,” Hunter said, not the kind of man to tread carefully around something if he didn’t have to, “Jemma Simmons. Finally.”

“That’s a strange way to put it.”

“Do you think?” Hunter raised his eyebrows. “ ’cause from this vantage, mate, it looks like your dream come true.”

“What dream?”

He expected a scoff, but Hunter squinted his eyes, thoughtful. “That she really is what you thought. That the two of you can really be what you wanted.”

Fitz looked out into the crowd—not _for_ her, he knew the chances of her being visible in that scrum were unlikely, but the shifting suit coats and sleek dresses only provided a backdrop to her image in his mind’s eye. What he wanted? Hunter had no way to know what he wanted. If they had broached the subject before the trip he could have only admitted to a desire to be friends; that was all he knew himself. And now? He still wanted to be her friend, of course. And he wanted to keep working with her. He wanted everything that he already _had_ , he just...also, he foolishly, helplessly, wanted more. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

Hunter did scoff then. “You don’t think she’s what you thought?”

“No! Of course she is. She’s everything I thought. She’s better.”

“Mmhmm.” Hunter mercifully didn’t comment. “So then, you don’t think you can be what you want. Why?”

A simple question. Hunter always asked simple questions; everything was always so straightforward in his head: Feel thirsty, have a drink. Get paid to break into a building, break into the building. Like a girl, date the girl. But Fitz knew better. Wanting something to be so didn’t make it the case; when you just jumped at the first thing that popped into your head, you often ended up lost in translation. And then came the mess. More often than not, the impulsive action ended in _losing_ the thing you were trying to gain.

Hunter would never understand this, though. The concept fundamentally escaped him; the only way Fitz could hope to explain would be to make it very concrete, and he couldn’t. The idea of trying to find words while the lady behind them—a dead ringer for a more imperious and ostentatious Dame Maggie Smith—looked on in judgment was too ridiculous to contemplate. To tell Hunter would be to tell everything, and Fitz didn’t even know everything himself.

His silence was apparently enough of an answer for Hunter, who shook his head with clear and complete disappointment. “Fitz. Fitz, Fitz. You have _got_ to stop doing this to yourself.”

“I’m not doing—”

“You  _are.”_ The queue moved forwards; Hunter took a step with it. “You just assume that what you’ve got is the best you’ll ever get, so you never even try for anything better. Even if the better thing is a sure thing. Which this is, by the way.”

“Nothing’s a sure thing.”

“I guess it’s possible the sun doesn’t rise tomorrow,” Hunter rolled his eyes, “but if we lived like we believed it, we might as well be moles.”

“No, hang on, if the sun didn’t rise we would have major—”

“You’re missing the point.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Fitz made a careful examination of the carpet. It had been a valiant effort, but the time had come. Hunter usually avoided getting serious like he avoided his in-laws; push him to the point where he refused the easy out, no one would get out at all until he had thoroughly done what he set out to do. “So, Hunter.”

“Yes, mate.”

“The thing is, there’s this girl I really, really like.”

And Hunter, bless him, did not respond with a sarcastic “no _really?_ ” but shoved his hands in his pockets and said, “tell me about it.”

* * *

Bobbi steered Jemma through the tables with a practiced hand, introducing her in passing to sundry authors and editors and with longer conversations to people she deemed important. How exactly Bobbi chose who was important Jemma couldn’t say—they had a lengthy chat with someone from legal about author contracts in the case of a writing team—but she trusted her editor’s judgment. Upon arriving at their table, Bobbi unceremoniously dumped her clutch next to the plate and sat down, indicating Jemma should take the chair beside her. “So,” she said. “How has your week been?”

Jemma slid into the seat, putting her own handbag in her lap. “How much detail would you like? Because I’ve got enough to fill two novels at least. I won’t use it all, of course, Fitz has had the most marvellous idea about structure—but oh, Bobbi, I’m sorry, it may take longer than anticipated. I am hopeful I won’t have to go to France, but I may.”

“As your editor, I’m going to make a note of that and we’ll talk about it at a better time. That’s not really what I meant, though.”

Jemma expected as much. No one really cared about her research in detail, except Fitz; if Bobbi was asking with that expectant eyebrow and intense focus, she had something very particular in mind. Something Jemma would prefer not to discuss. Taking a sip of water to buy her time and douse her enthusiasm, she fought for a businesslike tone. “To summarise, then: the week has been highly productive. We’ve managed to get through the majority of the relevant sources and plan to spend the second half of our time there identifying and burrowing into the truly essential ones. Having Fitz has been a tremendous help, as expected. He has a real sense for what I’ll want to see and I’ve appreciated his second—sometimes first—pair of eyes. I can’t imagine doing this project without him.”

There, she congratulated herself, that sounded straightforward and professional while providing enough personal detail to satisfy Bobbi’s curiosity. More than that she need not say.

“And it’s been okay with Fitz otherwise?”

“Of course.” She took another drink. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“No reason,” Bobbi said, faux-lightly, “and every reason it should. But you never know, do you. You can like a person a lot and still not want to travel with them. Eating patterns, responses to stress, annoying habits you can ignore in the short term and not get away from in the long...”

“Nothing like that. We’re getting on as well as we always have.”

“Good.” Bobbi reached for her own glass. “I’m glad to hear it. I’d hate for this trip to break up such a beneficial partnership.”

“Oh no. No chance of that. If anything, our relationship has improved.”

Having not yet swallowed, Bobbi nodded her understanding. Jemma let her hands relax. Easily through that, then. They could now move on to another topic of conversation. “I thought the event went very well last night. The audience gave good feedback, and Fitz said they were visibly engaged during the reading.”

“Fitz went with you?”

“Yes, we had dinner before and walked round after. I told him he didn’t have to come, but he wanted to. To see the Strand.”

“Any good purchases?”

“Oh, we didn’t have time to browse. It was very regimented.”

“And Fitz stayed for the reading?”

“Well, yes,” she said, not sure why Bobbi’s tone had arched so sharply. “I was a bit nervous at first, so he stayed for moral support. I appreciated it immensely; it makes such a difference to look up and find someone who knows you’re more than a tripped tongue or muffed answer.”

“He didn’t go this morning, did he?”

She laughed. “No, I knew better than to ask him to be awake so early. If you let him he’d sleep the morning half-away. Do you know how many alarms he has to set to be up at a decent hour?”

“I can’t say that’s a subject that we’ve ever discussed.”

“It must be three or four. They kept going off while he was in the shower; I finally had to find his phone and shut them off myself.”

“Wow.” Bobbi twirled the ice in her drink, steadily watching the little whirlpool she had created. “Jemma, I can tell you don’t want to talk about it, and that’s fine, but if you don’t want Hunter to give you a hard time you can’t talk about Fitz in the shower.”

Jemma’s fingers tightened convulsively around the stem of her glass. “What?” she choked out, knowing exactly what. “It’s not—we aren’t—”

Bobbi held up a hand to stop her. “Honestly, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to; I’m your editor, not your sister, and you have a right to keep your private life private. Hunter, I’m sorry to say, does not have the same decency, particularly not where Fitz is concerned. I will be shocked if he’s not getting the lowdown right now.”

“But there’s nothing to get the lowdown _on_ ,” she said helplessly. “There was a hotel mix-up at Cornell so we shared the room, but it was perfectly innocent.”

Well, she admitted to herself, maybe not _perfectly_ innocent. Though theoretically nothing had passed between them she couldn’t admit to her easily-horrified grandma, she would be loathe to let Granny in on the flood of slightly scandalous thoughts that had been pouring through her mind all day. But those thoughts, prevalent as they had been, only told a very small part of the story. Clearly, she found Fitz distractingly, disgustingly handsome. But more, she found him brilliant and sweet, the best collaborator a writer could wish for and a friend anyone would be lucky to have. Those were infinitely more important than any attraction, however it fluttered in her chest and sparked in her blood. Those things were more true.

“If you say so.” It could have been disbelieving or sarcastic, but Bobbi’s eyes were kind. She put her hand on Jemma’s forearm and gave it a gentle squeeze. “It’s between the two of you. Hunter won’t believe it, though, so I’ll run interference as much as I can.”

“Does he make a habit of refusing to believe the truth?”

Bobbi smiled, all sympathy. “He makes a habit of believing his own observations.”

Whatever protest Jemma might have made died on her lips. If that was Hunter’s criteria, she was doomed; she knew exactly what she and Fitz had looked like when Hunter came upon them. If she had seen two people standing like that, she would have assumed they were more than friends, too.

“Honey.”

She glanced up. Bobbi leaned in and lowered her voice, squeezing Jemma’s arm once again.

“Will you take some advice? Feelings are like first drafts—a lot of times you don’t know what you’re doing until you get through it. You just have to keep writing and see where it goes.”

“You know how my first drafts are, though.”

“I do,” Bobbi said, “but Fitz helps you improve them. And that’s _all_ I’m going to say.”

Jemma looked down into her glass, wishing very much Fitz would appear with her g&t. Instead—just as usefully—a loud screeching noise made everyone in the room duck involuntarily. “Whoops, sorry,” a mild voice said over the PA system, “we’ll get that figured out before the speeches begin.”

“Coulson,” Bobbi said, leaning back in her seat.

The publisher, who appeared to be standing on a little platform at the far end of the room, continued. “I’m told that they’re going to be bringing out the first course in a few minutes, so if everyone could find their seats. You aren’t going to get the food any faster if you waylay people in between tables—I’m looking at you, Barton.”

There was a general chuckle as people started to flow round the tables, filtering out of the stream as they found their seats. Hunter appeared on the other side of Bobbi, slamming into the chair, and Jemma felt the very tips of Fitz’s fingers brush across the line of her shoulders. “Sorry,” he said, leaning over her shoulder and setting her g&t in front of her, “the queue was to China.”

She shrugged as he sat down, trying to ignore the tingle up her spine. “It’s all right. If I had a drink and my bag I wouldn’t have been able to shake hands without looking all thumbs.”

“Mack said I should keep one hand free to hold things for you.”

Perfectly aware the warmth spreading through her chest had nothing to do with the gin, she set aside the mental image of Fitz asking his friends for advice and took another sip. “Mack’s wife runs a non-profit that...provides prostheses for people who can’t afford them?” At Fitz’s nod, she continued. “I expect he has a great deal of practice at these kinds of things.”

“You know, he’s really a mechanic,” Fitz said, unrolling his cutlery and placing his napkin in his lap. “He says getting the grease off his hands is the worst part of Elena’s job.”

“Man, that is one hundred percent true.”

They both looked at the speaker, the thin-faced man on Fitz’s other side who held out his own hands, backs up. His fingernails were rimmed with grease. “Working on my car helps with writer’s block. Doesn’t help much in looking professional.” Rotating his hands, he offered one to shake. “Robbie Reyes, ghost writer.”

They introduced themselves—Jemma, “biographies”; Fitz, “I don’t actually work here”—and met Robbie’s date, a self-described ‘social media maven’ named Daisy who professed herself a huge fan of Jemma’s work. “My favourite is the one about the London School of Medicine, but I’m super excited about the next one. The blurb looks amazing.”

“They did a good job on it, I think,” she agreed, “though Fitz says there’s too much mention of Tycho.”

“I’m only saying,” he protested, as he always had, “people who are interested in biographies are going to read it whoever it’s about. You should be enough.”

With the corner of her eye, Jemma saw Daisy make an _aww_ face. She ignored it for her own sanity. “Yes, but the whole draw of my oeuvre is women who are overshadowed by more famous men. If there’s not at least a nod to that—”

“So will the blurb for the Lavoisier book be an outright lie, or—”

“Well, one can’t help it if people assume.”

“An outright lie, then,” Fitz sighed. “Well, I suppose it’s only your own name you’re besmirching, so you may do whatever squares with your moral sense.”

“Oh, advertising is all half-truths anyway,” Daisy laughed, “if not total lies. Robbie gets paid to write books and give other people the credit—he’s probably the best-selling author you’ve never heard of.”

Robbie nodded. “Celebrity tell-alls are a lucrative business, and I’m the go-to guy for revenge. People eat that stuff up.”

“Smack a celebrity’s name on it and people will buy it,” Fitz said. “I’ve seen more terrible quasi-travelogues come through half-written by some girl who was on _The Bachelor_ than I try to remember.”

“What have they got to say about travelling?” Jemma asked, and he shook his head.

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

The salads arrived from above; Daisy leaned back to allow the waiter easier access. “Oh, so you do work in publishing! Where do you work?”

“Oh, I—”

Fitz gulped and glanced at Jemma, his leg starting a nervous bounce under the table. She placed a steady hand on his knee. “Fitz is a fact-checker,” she said brightly, “and he does translation work, as well. He’s made something of a specialty of travel guides.”

That ought to be safe enough—answered the underlying question without revealing any of the information that Fitz so desperately tried to conceal. And since most publishing houses didn’t keep full-time fact checkers, even people in the business like Daisy and Robbie would be unlikely to put two and two together. She thought. Fitz’s intense concern about his publishers’ all-seeing eye, though... But his leg stilled under her hand, and his face was pure relief. “Nothing so interesting as celebrity tell-alls. I guess you’ve got some good stories?”

“Does he ever!” Daisy crowed. “Tell them the one about the chop-shop.”

As they ate their salads, Robbie obliged, regaling them with outrageous tales—names detached—that drew even Hunter’s attention. Unwilling to be outdone, Bobbi’s husband offered them his own horror stories over the main course, which opened the table at large to the specific kind of refreshing conversation that consists primarily of complaining about the daily stupidity of the workplace. Since most of the people at the table made their bread-and-butter in the same industry, the stories flew fast and uproarious, adding particular relish to an already decidedly decent meal. Jemma threw herself into the gab with gusto. Talking hard meant she couldn’t think about anything past than the next anecdote and the meal in front of her. And she really _couldn’t_ think about anything past that, or she wouldn’t be able to think of anything else at all.

Dessert eaten and plates cleared, the waiters came around with one more round of drinks before the speeches. “Here we go,” Hunter said, leaning back in his chair, “brace yourselves. Fitz, you sure you don’t want to sit over here and we can play naughts-and-crosses on the tablecloth?”

“I’m fine where I am, thanks,” he responded, scooting his chair closer to Jemma’s and wrapping his hand around the newel-like knob by her shoulder. Her skin went goose-pimply.

Bobbi took a long swig of her wine. “Thank you, Fitz. You’re welcome to attend these whenever Jemma wants to invite you.”

So always then, she thought, and firmly closed the lid on the idea. Carefully, she adjusted her position in the seat to be comfortable herself without making Fitz think he should move his hand.

For all Hunter’s moaning, the speeches weren’t as dull as Jemma expected, and they had finished in an hour. “Not half horrible,” Fitz said, looking at his watch as he got to his feet. “There’s the reason to assume the worst.”

He said it like it was part of a conversation they had already been having, but Jemma didn’t remember the topic. “What?”

Hunter gave a loud snort. “When you’ve got insider information, you can make an educated guess. Without it you’re just screwing yourself over for no reason.”

Above her head, Fitz pressed his lips together and gave a slight nod. She recognized the signs of resignation, but couldn’t imagine what it was for. Before she could ask, though, Bobbi got her attention.

“I know you have the talk shows early, but there are a few more people I’d really like you to meet. Do you feel up to it?”

“Oh, I’m sure—what’s the time?”

Fitz answered without seeming to be part of the conversation. “Nearly ten.”

“I think I can manage a bit longer and still be sparkling tomorrow.”

“All right.” Standing, Bobbi handed Hunter her clutch and smoothed the wrinkles from her gown. “Jemma and I are making more rounds,” she told him. “Please try not to pick a fight, and don’t get Fitz into trouble.”

“I will be an angel,” Hunter promised.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” She kissed him firmly, as much a warning as a sign of affection. Feeling awkward, Jemma turned to gather her bag and found Fitz already holding it out to her.

“Good luck,” he said. “Not that you’ll need it.”

Their fingers brushed, ever so slightly, as she took the bag. “You’re sure you’d rather get into trouble with Hunter than come round with me?” she asked, smiling brightly to cover her sudden breathlessness.

He lowered his head and his voice, leaning forward just enough that she couldn’t tell whether the butterfly-touch of his thumb and forefinger against her wrist was an accident or a choice. “Honestly, I’d rather be with you. But you don’t need me, and Hunter might.”

And whether it was her wine or his words that made her brave, she said exactly what she meant to: “I need you more than Hunter.”

Without moving away, he smiled—that small, soft, spectacular smile that was only hers. From this distance it was tantalizing. “You’d better not let Bobbi hear you talking like that.” Her eyebrows drew together, but he continued, his thumb gentle over the soft skin of her pulse. “You’ve got all kinds of sentence construction there, Jemma. Do you need me more than you need Hunter? Do you need me more than Hunter does? She’d be all over it with a red pen.”

“Oh.” Drawing her arm out of his grasp—intentional? Inadvertent? She still couldn’t tell—she fluffed out her skirt and tucked her hair behind her ears. _Both_ , she knew she couldn’t say. “Even Bobbi doesn’t use correct grammar unfailingly. Sometimes the sense is more important than the rule.”

“You say that? Jemma Simmons?”

“It’s only a first draft, anyway.”

He frowned, obviously as confused as she had been a few minutes ago. As she still was, if it came to it. But Bobbi drew her away before she could explain, into the crowds where she was only Jemma Simmons, best-selling author, and not Jemma Simmons, entirely confused. Fortunately, even an entirely confused Jemma Simmons could manage to be perfectly professional, and Bobbi congratulated her when they had finally finished their rounds.

“You did really well. Coulson was really impressed.”

“Is he always like that?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder into the crowd.

Bobbi nodded. “It’s his way of keeping off sharks. But he liked you. I could tell.”

“So, am I more likely to get another contract because the publisher likes me, or—”

“You never know,” Bobbi said, somewhat mysteriously. “It’s always helpful to be on Coulson’s good side. You could need a favour someday.”

The winding paths between the tables had cleared out as they brown-nosed; anyone not hanging near the front for their audience with Coulson remained seated, chatting with their table partners. Fitz and Hunter hadn’t moved, still swapping stories with Daisy and Robbie. Jemma came behind Fitz, twisting her fingers together to keep from reaching out to touch his shoulder. “Duty done,” she said instead, and he turned sharply to find her.

“Mine too,” he said, “I have kept Hunter out of trouble by keeping him in his seat. Had to bribe him with drinks, of course—”

“Oh, Fitz,” she said, feeling her exhaustion bone-deep. “I don’t know—”

He got quickly to his feet, holding out his hand for pause. “We’ve already had them. I knew you’d want to go as soon as you’d finished.”

Relieved, she held up her phone. “I’ve already sorted the taxi.”

His appeared from his pocket. “Whoops, better cancel mine, then.”

They stood around the table talking for another few minutes, trusting Bobbi’s surety that it would take at least fifteen for a cab to arrive. Jemma and Daisy swapped Instagram handles, then snapped a cheerful selfie for Daisy’s boasting purposes. “My friends are going to be so jealous,” she said. “Is it okay to put the pictures online?”

“Certainly,” Jemma laughed, “as long as you credit us properly.”

“Don’t worry, I got it all.” Daisy typed something with both thumbs, then locked her screen and tucked her phone in her pocket. “It’s been great to meet you. I hope we’ll see you again at one of these things?”

“Fitz has apparently been invited to all of them.” Her eyes went, unconsciously, to where he stood with his arms crossed listening intently to Bobbi. If she interpreted the beat of his fingers against his forearm correctly, he was bursting to interject but holding back out of politeness; she’d have to be sure to ask him about it later. Fitz’s disagreements were either petty or brilliant, but either would be fascinating to hear. “But as I’m the one of us who actually works for Shield, we’ll have to see how things progress.”

“I have faith,” Daisy said. “You guys make a great team.”

Jemma returned her eyes to Daisy’s, flushing a little at the compliment. “Thank you, we do. I couldn’t ask for anyone better than Fitz.”

“He says the same about you. You should have heard him while you were walking around! I think you were every other word out of his mouth.”

“I was?”

“It was adorable,” Daisy said firmly. “Hashtag Goals.”

Jemma bit her lip, unsure both what to say and if she would be able to say anything without butterflies fluttering their way out of her mouth. Fortunately, a hesitant hand lighted at the small of her back before her silence became awkward.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Fitz said, his apology meant equally for her and Daisy, “but if we don’t go now I’m going to get into an argument with Bobbi about custom dictionaries in word processing programs, and we’ll miss our cab.”

“Well done, keeping yourself from that discussion,” Jemma said.

“It’s a struggle.” His eyes did not belie his words. “But before we go, could I ask—Daisy, would you mind taking a picture of us? My friend swore she’d steal my phone if I didn’t send her one.”

“Sure.” Daisy held out her hand for the phone Fitz offered her. “As a professional, let me tell you: you never get good pictures posing. Ignore me, and I’ll get a few good candids, okay?”

As though being forcibly candid resulted in any better pictures, Jemma thought, but she turned obediently to Fitz and raised her eyebrows. “I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me your thoughts on custom dictionaries?”

“Nothing you haven’t heard before,” he said. “Put your eyebrows down or Elena isn’t going to know what you really look like. Though”—one hand raised slightly, then returned to his side—“I don’t know, you look at me often enough like this. Maybe it’s more truthful.”

“If we wanted a truthful picture, we should have taken one in our jumpers at Cornell.”

“If we wanted a truthful picture, we should take one where one of us is on a computer screen,” he said. “This is an ideal version of us—dressed up, glamorous, not up to our elbows in musty documents or tea-stained proofs.” She opened her mouth to argue his version of ‘ideal’; nothing about jumpers and work sounded less than perfect to her. But he glanced down, quietly directing his next words where he thought they might not land as hard: “In the same place.”

The reminder hit her heart like a rock anyway, shattering the myriad mirrors she had set up to reflect different angles of their relationship until she could make sense of them all. Colleagues, friends, attracted, something _more_ —all of it was moot, because in a very few days he would return to Chicago and she would go home too, and they would go back to how they had been before. Any way she could have Fitz, she would, but he was right: Fitz-in-the-flesh was _infinitely_ preferable to Fitz-at-a-distance. No wonder he wanted to make the most of it while it lasted. Without allowing herself to think about it, she reached out and grabbed his hand, slotting her fingers between his startled ones.

His gaze, already stranded between them, snapped to the clasp and then to meet hers; his mouth, slightly open, trembled at the edges. His breaths were shaky, too, as unsteady as her own. She should have looked away, but she couldn’t. She should have let him go, but she wouldn’t.

“Jemma,” he said, voice low and brogue rolling, “what are y—”

“Let’s not let this be the only time,” she said, tightening her grip. “Or go another eight years. Can we do that?”

It wouldn’t glue her mirrors back together, not even remotely solve the problem of the many facets of Fitz, but it would be enough for now. Enough to know this wouldn’t be the last time to bask in the great golden glow of him. Something flickered in his eyes—something hot, something deep—and he swayed towards her, exactly as he had done earlier. She held her breath, waiting.

“Okay, got some great ones!”

Daisy’s voice fell over them like a bucket of ice water, and they all but leapt back from each other. Jemma’s hands went primping of their own volition—her hair, her skirts, her hair again—and she tried not to notice how cold they felt now. Fitz took his phone back from Daisy and shoved it in his pocket without looking. “I’m sure they’re fine,” he said to Daisy’s protest that he should look at them, “you’re a professional, after all. And Jemma’s bag just buzzed, so I think our taxi’s here.”

Since the whole world seemed to be vibrating slightly, she wasn’t surprised she had missed the notification.

They said their goodbyes in a rush, not wanting to let the meter run longer than they had to, and Jemma never really remembered the ride in the lift or the longer one back to the hotel. Nothing seemed to exist outside the ghost of his hand twined with hers and the solid knot of tangled-up feelings sitting in her chest. This morning, riding in a different darkened cab with his presence only through FaceTime, everything had seemed so simple: they were as they had always been, except for the insistent intrusive realizations of his physicality—and she could cope with those. But now, going the opposite direction, with him more present but less _there_ , simplicity seemed a distant dream. She had wanted to kiss him, earlier—not only just now, not only at the Met, but when she opened the door to find him looking at her like a newly-discovered primary source, and when he helped her out of the cab without stopping his complaints, and when he used his toast to sop up the leftover egg yolk on her plate, and, oh, more times even than those. That didn’t settle anything though, not really. Fitz wasn’t just someone she could kiss without repercussions; everything they did together mattered more than anything else in her life. He was _real_. Their relationship, whatever it was, was _real_. She just...needed to sort out what it was. Somehow.

Fitz, too, spent the trip staring out the window, brow furrowed in secret musings she didn’t dare to ask about. And when they got to the hotel, they rode the lift up in silence, her hand in the crook of his arm, and parted without another word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may note that this has gone from three chapters to four...the fourth and last will be forthcoming by the end of this week!


	4. Chapter 4

In the morning, things looked brighter. Aside from the text from Bobbi that greeted her with her alarm— _wait until the end of the draft—_ it might have been yesterday morning, or last week, or sometime before she had severely complicated her professional life by confusing it with her personal one. She went about her morning routine with a smile, reminding herself that she only had a few more events this morning before she and Fitz could return to Cornell, the Lavoisiers, and the easy camaraderie that defined their relationship much better than whatever she had been feeling yesterday. Which might have been, she told herself firmly, a result of the romance of her dress and his suit and the wine and the sparkling chandeliers, and the sheer cinematic dream that was New York City in the fall. She really couldn’t say at this time. Not that she would fold up the idea and ignore it, but she didn’t have to decide anything just yet—after all, they still had three days together to sort things out. Much better to continue as normal.

Fitz, meeting her for breakfast, seemed to have come to the same conclusion. Slightly rumpled but otherwise as usual, he tucked away two sides of bacon and a plate of pancakes while discussing his thoughts on Shield’s stated objectives for the next year, then finished off her fruit while she debated the merits of taking their luggage with them to her events.

“Don’t do it,” he said around a mouth full of cantaloupe. “Where are you going to put them in the studios? Hassle for everyone involved.”

“You could watch them,” she said, “they take up a little room, but not a lot.”

“But you don’t know where we’ll be,” he argued. “It’s just as easy to leave them here. Plus, then you don’t have to try to drive in the city.”

Glancing down at the schedule on her phone, she looked at the end time for her last event. Two days of city traffic had given her a fairly good idea of how long coming back to the hotel before heading to Cornell would take, and she regretted any more delay than necessary. As it was, they would only have two more days with the material before their flights home. “It just seems a waste.”

Under the table, his knee bumped hers—unintentionally, she was sure. “We won’t get back before the library closes today, anyway. We’ll either be hanging around in cars or hanging around the hotel there. Six and two threes, if you ask me.”

“You’re right,” she sighed. “I suppose we can strategize just as well here as there.”

“That’s the spirit,” he said. “And, I’ve already brought my bag down to the desk.”

The Monday events should, by any rights, have been her most nerve-wracking: making the round of several talk shows to plug her new book before a live studio audience and, eventually, the country. These would be the interviews that would live forever on YouTube if she did anything horrifically embarrassing, or be pointed to if _Sophia_ undersold. And yet she had none of Saturday’s nerves, or even Sunday’s; any time during the preparations she began to feel anxiety creeping over her Fitz was there, distracting her with a meme or reassuring her with his eyes. He had to wait in the green room while she was actually on set, of course, but the awareness of him watching somewhere nearby reminded her she wasn’t on her own in this, and never had been. Never would be, as far as she could see.

After the second show, they fell into the cab that heading to the third and last, heaving a simultaneous heavy sigh before meeting each other’s eye and laughing. “Nearly done,” he said, “and you’re flying.”

“Do you think?” she asked, light-headed.

“They bowled you a right one, with that question about astrology. But you handled it with aplomb.”

 “I thought I might get that one eventually, so I planned an answer in advance. It didn’t sound too practiced, did it?”

“No, it’s brilliant. Everyone said so. Everyone with the little headsets”—he drew an invisible line down his cheek to describe what he meant—“kept coming up to me to give you compliments. And your publicist sent me a link after _The View_ with the comments on Twitter.”

“Twitter? Really?” She reached for her purse, then thought the better of it and sat on her hands. “I can’t look. If there’s something bad I know I’ll be thinking of nothing else.”

“Let me, then.” Holding up one finger, he dug around in his pocket to pull out his phone. “I had to put the phone away on silent or I think security would have murdered me, but I should be able to give you the highlights before—”

He pushed the home button and his voice cut out, all colour draining from his face as he stared at the screen.

“Fitz?” Something terrible had happened, that much was clear, but what— He didn’t answer her, unlocking the screen and scrolling madly through whatever appeared. “Fitz,” she said again, “what is it? Your mum? Has there been some sort of attack?”

“No.” He barely managed to get out the word. “They’ve—oh, damn, how—”

But the phone started ringing in his hand, and he closed his eyes and lifted it to his ear. “Hello, sir.”

Cold chills ran over Jemma’s whole body, and she understood his sudden terror. There was surely only one person Fitz would call sir.

“No, sir, you haven’t missed an email. I’m not done with them yet. Well, there’s been a bit of a—” He stopped to let whoever was at the other end of the call yell. Jemma couldn’t distinguish the words, but there was no mistaking the tone. “To be fair, sir, I have been—I am on holiday, as you know—what? No, of course not. I’m logging my billable hours as I always do. Sir—”

More shouting from the end of the line. Fitz sunk into the seat.

“No, I _don’t_ think that’s called for—I told you before it was raving barking mad to think you would be able to do all the necessary work—can I help it if people don’t get back to me? What? There’s a _time difference_ , I can’t be at work twenty-four-seven— _excuse me?_ ”

Whatever the other person was saying made his body tense up and his face turn red; he opened his mouth several times without being able to interject, but when he did it came out with the force of a train:

“I am _not_ sleeping with the enemy, whatever you may think—no, I can’t explain how she got that impression, I certainly didn’t—I really don’t think I have to explain what I do in my own time—yes, this _is_ my own time—nobody asks you about your private life, sir, I don’t think it’s legal for you to punish me for mine—well, no, she isn’t—”

Fitz shot her a drowning, desperate look, then buried his face in the hand not holding the phone. “My relationship with Jemma Simmons, whatever it is, is not part of this discussion. No, sir, I’m bloody well not going to tell you what it is.”

He was silent for a long time, going alternately grey and red as the voice on the phone shouted on and on. Jemma gripped the edge of the seat with both hands, trying to keep herself tethered to earth. Finally, still curled in on himself, Fitz spoke.

“Yes. I understand. Yes. All right. Goodbye.”

He hung up the phone and just sat with it loosely in his hand, hanging his head between his shoulders. Then, faster than she could see, he swore furiously, flung it away from him, and slammed his other hand against the window, once, twice, three times before she could reach out and trap it between her own. “Fitz, Fitz!” she said, catching his hand and pressing it to her chest, “please, what’s happened?”

He cursed for another second, rubbing his free hand over his face and up into his hair. When he spoke, it was from behind his fingers. “They found us out.”

She had been right, then. A sick feeling rushed over her in a wave, and she clasped his hand tighter, like it would keep him from being swept away. “How?” she asked, though it was hardly the relevant question.

“Daisy posted something,” he said hollowly, “from last night. Tagged us in it. I didn’t know they stooped to monitoring my non-existent social media presence, but apparently—”

She retrieved his phone from where it had landed by her foot, holding it out for him to unlock. He did so without looking. Locating Instagram hidden in a sub-folder on his third page of apps, she found the post instantly: an album tagged ShieldGala, featuring Daisy, Robbie, the selfie she and Daisy had taken, and a candid photo of their table listening to the speeches. Fitz was clearly visible in the last, his arm on her seat and his face focused; this one was tagged with his handle. “‘Best part of the night: meeting Jemma Simmons and her partner,’” she read aloud from the caption. “‘I’m not sure if the books or their stories are better.’ Oh, Fitz. I never said—”

“I know,” he said, still grey. “I didn’t either. I don’t even know if she means it that way, or—but it doesn’t matter.”

“Oh,” she said, turning pale herself as more of the overheard conversation made sense, “oh, Fitz, I’m sorry—”

He swore again, violently, not meeting her eyes. “I knew this would happen. I _knew_ it.”

“But what _has_ happened,” she asked desperately, “what—”

“I’ve been ordered back.”

“What?”

It seemed incredible, that the whole conversation could be summed up in so few words. She shook her head, trying to force it to make sense. “Ordered—?”

“They’ve said,” he looked up, but still not at her, “they’ve said that if I come back right now, explain myself at length, and finish the book, I won’t be sacked and sued for breach of contract.”

“Oh,  _Fitz_.”

“I could probably prove I’m innocent of that, but I don’t think I could afford it. Definitely not if I’m out of work. I don’t—”

Finally, he looked at her, eyes hopeless, face ashen. She set the phone down and took his other hand from the seat between them. They went through two intersections before either of them could find any more words.

“I have to go, Jemma.”

“I know,” she said, and she did. He didn’t have another choice. “It’s fine.”

“But your research—”

“Well, we’ll just do it like before.” She tried to smile. “We’ve written enough books that way; we can do it again. I’ll send you scans.” A more horrible thought struck her. “That is, if you’ll still—”

He pulled his hands away. “I don’t know. I want to, but—I don’t know.”

She nodded, smiling brighter so she wouldn’t cry. “You let me know, then. When you do. It’s all right, Fitz.”

“No,” he said. “It isn’t, really.”

They didn’t say anything for another long while. Then, when the marquee for the studio came into view in the distance, Jemma decided someone had to take the bull by the horns. “If you leave now, would you be able to change your flight from Thursday? It might be more expensive, but—”

“But what else can I do?” He shrugged. “I guess I’ll just...drop you off, go pick up my bag, and then head to the airport. There’s got to be some flight they can shove me on, somewhere.”

Her voice left her body in a near-wail, a circumstance that would have mortified her were she not too otherwise distraught: “Oh, right now?”

He had to go, of course, she understood, but _right now_ —being thrust so abruptly from the happy expectation of several more days of his company to the lonely reality of solely her own made her head spin. If she could only have the few hours of this next event to wrap her mind around it, she would be able to make the transition much easier, surely.

But though he looked as miserable as she felt, he nodded. “The sooner the better, I think. It’s not going to get any less rotten putting it off.”

She didn’t trust herself to answer, so she gave something that might have passed for a nod and turned her eyes resolutely ahead. So just until they reached the studio, then. Even in Manhattan traffic, that couldn’t be longer than a few minutes; she had almost no time left at all before everything ended. It did feel, inexorably, like the end—not only of this time, but of what they had been the last eight years together. She knew Fitz. Now armed with proof of what he had been saying all along, he would become doubly careful about offering his help, assuming he felt able to offer it at all. Their partnership wasn’t the totality of their connection, but it was a large part; without it, there would be no reason for daily phone calls and hourly texts, much less for another research trip like this one. Eventually, they would drift apart. And whatever butterfly might have been inside their warm, bright cocoon of collaboration and companionship would never emerge.

Much sooner than seemed possible, the car pulled up to the back entrance of the theatre. “All right,” the cabbie said, “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but are we going someplace else now, or are we settling up?”

“Someplace else,” Fitz said. “Just a minute and I’ll tell you where.” He reached across the seat between them to nudge her arm. “Er, what’s the address?”

“Ugh, Fitz.” She managed a wavering smile, then provided directions to the driver. “But please, hold on a minute, I’ve got to get out.”

“Suit yourself.”

She took a deep breath and popped open the door, stepping out more slowly than her shoes really required. Behind her, she heard Fitz’s door open and shut, and when she turned he was already halfway around the car with arms outstretched, ready to catch her when she flung herself into them.

“I’m sorry,” he said into her hair, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, Fitz. It’s my fault. I told Daisy—and I invited you on this stupid trip anyway—I’ll never forgive myself if you lose your job over my silly—”

“Hey, hey.” With his hands on her shoulders, he separated them just enough to meet her eyes, using his thumb to push her hair out of her face. “I agreed to come. I wanted to come. I wouldn’t change a single minute of it. Don’t, don’t blame yourself for stuff I don’t regret.”

He might regret all of it, this weekend and the work and answering her email in the first place. The thought cracked her heart, but better face the facts straightaway. “If you do,” she said, staring at the small wet patch she had made on his jumper.

Without looking, he placed his hand over the spot like he was laying it on his heart. Instead, it rested the exact same place it did when he slept. “That’s never going to happen.”

It sounded like nothing so much as a promise—not one that he could know he would keep, not one that could even be relied upon to last through the end of today. But she knew her wonderful, marvellous Fitz meant it with his whole enormous heart, and in this moment that was enough. Just for right now, she decided to believe him. “All right,” she said, taking a further step out of his arms, “but you will regret leaving the metre running, especially if you have to take a cab all the way to the airport.”

“And you’ll catch it from your publicist if you’re late.”

“Very true,” she agreed. “So.”

“So.” He shifted his weight from side to side, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Well, good luck, then. Depending on when I get a flight, I’ll ring you to hear how it went.”

“Yes, thanks. And. . .good luck to you, too. I hope it ends all right.”

He huffed, shrugging. “Relative term, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

They stood on the pavement, neither speaking, neither moving. Neither looking away. Words thronged to Jemma’s tongue, but none of them made it out. None of them were what she wanted to say—or all of them were, and that very fact silenced her as neatly as if she had none. On second miserable thought, perhaps he was right that sooner was better. Having the extra three hours, or extra hundred, would only make this more unbearable.

“Well then,” he said finally, “I’m off. I’ll see you, Jemma.”

“Yes,” she said, not at all as confident as she sounded, “see you.”

She did not stand and watch the cab disappear around the corner, much as she might have wished to. Instead, she rubbed her hands over her face to remove any trace of tears and lifted her chin, drawing on the inspiration of her Science Heroines. Now there were ladies who knew about doing work regardless of personal turmoil.

Entering the building, she got directions to the proper studio and made her way there, locating the wrangler (the technical term, as Fitz had found out at their first stop) and checking in without issue. Traffic had, after all, made her a little behind time, so they sent her directly to wardrobe for a refresh before hustling her into a make-up chair. A production assistant met her there and started running down the list of questions.

“Your publicist said to talk about this book, of course. Any anecdotes the host should know to ask about?”

“About Sophia?” Jemma considered, then caught the PA’s eye in the mirror in front of her. “She’s got many interesting stories, but I don’t know that there’s anything that particularly jumps out. People always like to hear that she was self-educated.”

The woman wrote that down. “Do you have any particular connection to her? I mean, is there something about her you really identify with?”

“Neither of us can speak Latin.”

The other woman laughed; so did Jemma. “That’s good, he’ll like that. They said you’re working on a new book, right? Can we ask about that?”

“Of course. I’m in the middle of researching it right now, so I’ve got lots to say about it.”

“This is a short segment, so don’t get too excited.” Tapping the end of her pen against her clipboard, the PA considered the list. “Apart from that, it’ll just be general author questions you’ve heard a hundred times before. Any concerns?”

Jemma expressed herself contented, and the PA left her in the hands of the make-up and hair people.

“You’re on a whirlwind,” the hairstylist said when Jemma explained why she had so much product in her hair. “How are you holding up?”

“Pretty well,” she said. “Once I stop, I’m sure I’ll collapse in a heap, but as long as I keep busy I’ll manage.”

“I hope you’ve had some time to look around while you’re here, at least. It would be too bad if you came all the way here and didn’t see any of the sights.”

“We had brunch at Balthazar on Sunday, and went to the Met after.”

 _We_. The word hung in the air, a potent reminder of what had been only a few minutes ago, and Jemma winced in expectation of the question that would no doubt follow: _you and who?_ or perhaps _oh, is someone here with you?_ No, she answered in her mind, but my collaborator—my friend—my—

The stylist loosed the strand of hair she was curling, then picked up the next. “Balthazar’s very swanky. I’ve never been, do you think it’s worth it? I’m more a sweet, breakfasty-brunch person, if that makes a difference.”

“So is the person I was with, and he seemed happy with his meal.”

Perversely, the hairdresser refused to rise to the bait yet again, instead asking what Jemma saw at the Met and if she was an art person in general. With the natural loquacity of hairdressers, she kept up a steady stream of talk until Jemma was camera-ready. “There,” she said with a final pat, “you’re gorgeous. Break a leg.”

Now an old hand at the talk show circuit, Jemma knew to go to the green room to wait her turn on camera. She went in, smiled at the other people scattered—a woman in a smart blazer who was clearly an assistant of some kind, an actor she vaguely recognized from the rare occasions she watched telly live, and a group of people she gathered were musicians from their band t-shirts—and found a seat in the corner, quickly retrieving her phone from her pocket. It was now an hour and thirty-six minutes from the time she had left Fitz. He may not have even made it to the airport yet; she could, theoretically, call him. Or text him. But what would she say? Nothing had happened worth commenting on yet, and while she could come up with a question to ask, it wouldn’t be anything urgent. They didn’t speak to each other if they didn’t need something. It would be strange to begin now, a clear sign of—well, of something new. Resolutely navigating to the New York Times Book Review, she pulled up Sunday’s issue and opened the first article she saw. Not that she had much interest in “A Dark Cavalcade of New Horror Fiction,” but one must do something to keep from texting _This is utterly dreary without you_ to one’s collaborator—friend— _whatever he was_ , not matter how much one might wish to.

She still opened and shut their text conversation a dozen times. The article wasn’t particularly interesting, anyway, nor was the one she tried after that, nor the one after that.

Shortly after she gave up the whole project as hopeless and tried to settle down with a crossword puzzle, a different production assistant came to fetch her. “The guest before you is almost done,” she said, covering her mic with one hand, “so we’ll just set you up, okay? If you’ll give your phone to me I’ll make sure nothing happens to it.”

Jemma handed it over, obedient. “It’s already on silent. I’ve been doing these all morning; I’ve got the drill down, I think.”

“No worries.”

The PA pocketed Jemma’s phone and got her in place just in time to see the actor from the green room—whom Jemma hadn’t noticed leave—stride through the curtain, which meant there was scarcely time to be nervous before she was onstage herself, shaking the host’s hand and making sure her skirt was pulled down and wouldn’t wrinkle oddly while they talked.

“So,” the host said, leaning across the desk like he actually cared, “you write biographies.”

“They’re narrative biographies, yes—they read a bit more like a novel than a traditional biography would.”

He nodded understanding. “How did you get into that?”

These were easy questions, ones she had answered dozens of times before; Jemma responded without having to think much about them. The host then moved on to asking questions about _Aminus Invictus_ specifically: who Sophia was, what she did, the research process.

“It must have been complicated, right,” the host asked, leaning back in his chair, “because she was—Danish?”

“Yes.”

“But she spoke German, as well. And this title, it’s Latin. So that’s three different languages we’re dealing with here.”

“Well, Sophia didn’t speak or write in Latin,” she corrected. “She wasn’t allowed to learn because of her gender. She and I are the same, insofar as we both have to rely on other people to translate important texts for us—though I have nothing like her excuse. I probably should try to learn.”

“It would be a knockout punch to sexism,” the host agreed. The audience laughed. “Or you could write about someone from an English-speaking country. Unless you ran out of them?”

The audience laughed again. Smile pasted in place, Jemma gratefully used the pause to deal with her sudden realization. If Fitz couldn’t work with her anymore, she conceivably _could_ write about an English-speaking Science Heroine, or one whose works had been translated. That would be a straightforward solution. Straightforward, but unsatisfying.

The laugh died down, necessitating her answer: “In thousands of years of scientific pursuit, there are likely a few more women who deserve to have their stories told.”

Or she could find another translator. Theoretically, any of the millions of people who spoke French or German or Spanish could help her.

The host glanced down at his paper, then up to where she knew the countdown clock was displayed. “I’m sure there are. So I gotta ask, how do you choose who to write about? Do people give you suggestions, do you find them yourself somehow...?”

She could hire a fact-checker, too, if she found it necessary, perhaps one who specialized in eighteenth-century France or early chemistry, subjects Fitz, bless him, had only a rudimentary knowledge of...

“I find them myself,” she answered, “I’ve got bits and bobs of dozens of ideas floating around my files. I don’t always know why I’ve chosen them until I’ve finished writing the book, but I often find my interest comes from something I’ve been thinking about personally. When I wrote about Dorothea Klumpke, for example, it was because I was pondering what it meant to be an ex-patriot. Sophia Brahe helped me examine the lengths I go to in my own work and what I’m willing to do for it.”

Even if Fitz couldn’t do it with her, she had to finish the book. She could hardly just abandon the Lavoisiers after all the time and energy she and Fitz had devoted to them; their story deserved to be told. And she wanted to be the one to do it, for his sake as well as her own. Even though the thought of writing without him made her want to be sick.

“And you’re writing a new book now, is that right?”

“Yes.”

More, she _needed_ to tell their story, needed desperately to understand why this couple with their combined brilliance and successful partnership and tender love had become as real to her as people she knew, more real in fact than anyone except—

The host disappeared. The audience disappeared. The lights, the cameras, the seat underneath her, everything fell away until the only thing that was left was Marie’s hand on her husband’s shoulder and the wise, knowing gaze: _oh, ma chère fille_ , she said in quintessentially French amusement, _whose story is it you think you’re writing?_

Bon mot dropped, Marie disappeared, leaving Jemma to finish the interview with her mind less than half there; she had never been so grateful for her prepared answers, and doubly grateful that the host didn’t seem interested enough to ask penetrating questions. If he had, though, he would have got the same answer again and again. It was Fitz, of course, everything went back to Fitz somehow: the reason she chose her subjects, her writing process, her audience, her measure of success. Other factors and people had their proper place, but without her conscious knowledge he had become the most important outside influence in every part of her life. In _every_ part, she now realized. Her dichotomies about Fitz-her-collaborator vs. Fitz-her-friend vs. Fitz-her-object of desire were both foolish and false. This weekend hadn’t opened up new facets of Fitz, new paths their relationship could tread; all it had done was give them two seconds together to see where the path they were already on led: to home, in each other’s hearts.

But only two seconds together, she thought, coming abruptly back to the ground as she shook the host’s hand and waved to the studio audience. Her epiphany had come too late. He was gone, not just back to the life they had before but perhaps one that didn’t include her at all, and these few days of complete partnership might end in being nothing more than a taste of what they could have had, if only she had been quicker to understand. If only she had acted when she had the opportunity.

Well, no more.

She divested herself of the stage business—mic, make-up, wardrobe—as quickly as she could, making detached small talk with anyone congratulating her and touching the pocket with her retrieved phone in it every two seconds. Fully aware that time was tight but equally certain that she would only have this wind behind her for so long, she managed not to check her phone until she was safely in the cab back to the hotel. Nothing from Fitz, she noticed with a pang. Well, no doubt the logistics of returning to Chicago had taken up all his attention. But it had been several hours now; surely he would have that sorted and be able to take a call? Or should she text first, to be sure he could speak? No, she decided, it had to be done all at once, or not at all. She wouldn’t have the courage otherwise.

Taking a deep breath, she found his contact—at the top of her list, as it always was, how had she been so _blind_ —and pressed  _call_.

“Hi, you’ve reached Leopold Fitz. Leave a message if it seems appropriate.”

She could have wept. Instead, she waited for the beep:

“Hi, Fitz, it’s me. Jemma. I just wanted to tell you the last interview went well, I think—we’ll see when it comes out of the wash, I suppose”—if that wasn’t true on more levels than she cared to think about—“and to see if you were able to sort out your flight. But if you’ve gone straight to voicemail, you must already be on airplane mode. Or your battery died again. You really ought to see about having that replaced.” She laughed hollowly to herself, shaking her head at her own inanity. “That’s it, really. Except that I hope you aren’t flayed too horribly, and I’m sorry, again. Ring me when you’ve got a chance and tell me how it was. Or not, if you don’t want to speak about it. However you—yes. I’m going to say goodbye now. Goodbye.”

Holding her phone between her hands, she shut her eyes in a desperate attempt to dam back the threatening flood. It might be that his battery died, but far more likely he was already on a flight and therefore already gone. And once he was gone, the chances of catching him before he went to his publishers seemed nearly as absent, and with those chances went all her courage. She could talk to him after, of course. He would ring her back sometime, even if only to let her know he was safely home. But once he had saved his job by promising who knew what, would she be able to say all the things pressing on her heart? Even for herself, she wouldn’t risk that hurt to him. Loving someone like Fitz, one found one didn’t matter as much.

The drive back to the hotel felt interminable. Jemma still wished it would never end. As soon as she arrived she would have to face the dismal reality of her trip—and work—without Fitz—roll her own suitcases, drive four hours in an empty car, return to a lonely room, work for two days without anyone across the desk. And then home, to who knew what. Clutching her phone tighter, she resisted the urge to ask the driver to go round again. Putting it off wouldn’t solve anything. Instead she sighed and paid, going to tuck her phone into her purse along with her wallet as she clambered out.

The screen lit up.

Remembering all at once that she had never taken her phone off silent, Jemma stood on the curb scrambling to pick it up, all thumbs and hare-hurried heart. “Fitz?”

His voice came over the line, distant and quiet, but him. “I saw you called me—sorry, my phone—”

“I know, I know,” she interrupted, turning on her heel to walk quickly into the lobby for a bit more privacy, “it’s all right, I’ll talk fast. Fitz, listen, just listen until I’ve got it all out, do you promise?”

“Okay,” he said, “but—”

“I’ve figured out why I’m writing about the Lavoisiers,” she said, and as she came to a stop behind a large potted plant the threatening tears finally escaped. “Oh, Fitz, I’m not writing about the Lavoisiers at all—that is, I am, but I’m really writing about us. About you and me. Antoine would be lost without Marie and I would be lost without you, your translations and your fact-checking and your insistence that I never use the word ‘interestingly’ and your sly jokes and your brilliant mind and your kind heart. You are my genius research partner, but I think we could be partners in more ways than just work—I know it would be complicated because of your job and the fact that we live so far apart, but those are just logistics, and I’m willing to do whatever we must to have a chance at this. At us. Or even if you can’t work with me, I’d still like you to  _be with me_ , if. . .if that’s something you want, too. And I hope you do, because I think—Fitz, I think—”

She stopped, just to take a deep breath before saying the words that would inexorably carry them over the banks of _collaborators_ to something else entirely. And then the phone went dead.

She stared at it in disbelief, fresh tears coursing down her cheeks. “Oh damn,” she choked out. “Oh, _damn_. Why is your battery so rotten!”

“It’s not the battery’s fault, this time.”

She knew she physically turned, but her head was whirling so much she hardly noticed. It seemed as though Fitz had appeared from thin air, wearing emotions across his face like clouds in the spring and that same shabby jumper she had cried on already once today, shoving his phone in his pocket and looking at her like she was a revelation to him, too.

“You’re here,” she said, hardly recognising her own voice.

“Yes.”

“You haven’t left yet?”

“I did.” He took a step towards her.

Her brain could not handle anything more than him, so she stayed where she was. “But you’re here.”

“The thing is,” he said, coming closer, “the thing is, I came all the way here, went all the way to the airport, got all the way to the counter to see about changing my ticket, and then I couldn’t go any further. So I came back.”

“Why?” she asked, tipping her head back just enough to meet his blue-fire gaze. A frond from the plant fell between their bodies; she pushed it away. If she was here, and he was here, nothing else was allowed between them.

“Well, part of it was I realized I’m still on holiday, and they have no legal grounds to demand I come back.”

Then, gently, he reached down and took the phone she hadn’t known she was still holding, slipping it into her purse.

“But more,” he continued, “I realized that I don’t want to go back to only seeing you on screens. And that I’d rather not have my job than not have our job, together. And that—”

He flushed, glancing over her shoulder and huffing an irritated breath before returning his eyes to hers. “This is going to be embarrassing. Are you okay if I make a scene in the lobby?”

“I’ve already made one myself,” she said, her hands finding his, “crying behind a potted plant about eighteenth-century scientists.”

His fingers tightened around hers, and he nodded firmly. “Right then. Well, the other thing I realized is that I 100 percent identify with Antoine Lavoisier, because I also lo— work with a woman who’s brilliant and beautiful and makes me better than I am. I know you just said I’m Marie, but someone’s got to be Antoine because—”

But she knew where he was going before he even finished the sentence, and she dropped his hands only to put hers on his face and pull him towards her, meeting his ready lips—since he understood where she was going without being told—in the middle.

All her contemplation and observation over the last few days had done nothing to prepare her for the reality of kissing Fitz. Had she allowed herself to imagine it, she would have come up with the prickle of his beard, the comfort of his smell, the warmth of his jumper, but she could never have imagined the smooth softness of his mouth, or the deep heady taste of him, or the fierce careful way he wrapped his arms around her. She had known Fitz before, known him well, but kissing him was like opening up Marie-Anne Lavoisier’s travel case for the first time: all that had come before was only the preparation, and now the better work would begin.

They came to a stop by mutual, unspoken consent, and Jemma let her hands fall from his neck to his shoulders. “I don’t want to speak too far ahead of the research,” she said, no longer needing breath to say what must be spoken, “but I think it’s very likely that I am in love with you.”

“That’s handy.” His naturally sober expression was no match for the grin breaking across his face. “I feel the same way.” 

“But, oh!” Clenching the front of his jumper between her fingers, she was distracted for just a moment while he darted another quick kiss forward. “Is it handy, actually? You’ve still got a truly terrible job, and it’s rather far from me.”

“I thought you said you were willing to do whatever?”

“Well, I _am_ , but I don’t want you to—”

“I quit,” he said. “Technically, I still have to deliver this book, and a couple others. But they were going to fire me anyway, so I beat them to the punch. Thought I’d try freelancing for awhile.”

“Fitz,” she whispered, utterly overwhelmed.

“Thing is, I already have a decent connection. I think she can probably toss a few good projects my way.”

She felt a smile tugging the corners of her mouth. “And would this connection have an interest in scientists, especially French ones?”

“Not at all.” She pulled back, confused, but he tightened his grip around her waist and smirked. “Except insofar as she will be editing a bestseller about them in the next few years. Pity for her, really; she’d enjoy it so much more if she—”

A peal of laughter rang up from Jemma’s chest, and she ducked her head against Fitz’s shoulder before attempting a serious face. “As long as Bobbi understands I have first claim on your time and talent, beginning this very second. Will those terms of partnership be agreeable to you?”

“Immensely.”

Had she thought Fitz glowed before? She almost couldn’t look at him, the light in his face was so bright. “And so,” he continued, “we should probably get on the road, hey? Don’t want to waste any time we could be holed up in the archives. Plus, if we leave right now we might be lucky and find a hotel with more than one available room.”

He neatly detached himself, turning to take half a step away before she reached out and pulled him back into the circle of her arms where, despite only having recently occupied the premises, he had quickly made himself at home. “A very intelligent man I know told me this morning here and there were six-and-two-threes; anything we can do there we can do here just as easily. I think we’ve got a bit of time to spare.”

From the way his smile slotted against hers, he had no objection to that.

* * *

As it turned out, by the time _And His Wife: Marie-Anne and Antoine Lavoisier_ came out—a year or so later than anticipated, what with new research and modified contracts and all—Fitz’s name was all over it: the title page, where it appeared under Jemma’s in a slightly smaller typeface (at his insistence); the inside back cover, under a picture of the two of them jumper-clad and peering at the same piece of paper; on the copyright page, where he was (“finally,” Jemma said) granted the rights to his translations. But the only one Fitz felt really mattered was Jemma’s dedication:

_For Fitz, my genius research partner and brilliant husband. My favourite part of my work is that we do it together._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before we begin I would like to say I did do some research on talk show tapings, but please don't @me. Remember this is how things work in Hallmark-movie-world.
> 
> Enjoy!


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